Following the recent release of his new short story collection, Lies Of Tenderness, Stephen Volk sits down with Ginger Nuts Of Horror to discuss the collection, writing during the pandemic, and ‘the edge of okay’. Enjoy!


Ginger Nuts Of Horror:  Thanks so much for taking the time to talk with us. I guess my first question is, how does it feel to have Lies Of Tenderness out in the world? I saw your recent unboxing video on Twitter and you looked absolutely delighted.


Stephen Volk: It’s always a big day for me! The best part, really, because it’s the first time I can hold in my hands the cover by Pedro Marques and see it in all its glory. Pedro has designed all my books for PS – starting with The Parts We Play (my third collection), then The Little Gift as a standalone volume, then The Dark Masters Trilogy, then Under a Raven’s Wing. He does a brilliant job every time and it’s always a joy to see what he comes up with.


GNoH: As noted in our review, the collection covers an expansive range of subjects, themes and styles, from the mythic to the mundane. How much time is spent on sequencing the collection so the stories flow well?


SV: I fiddled with it over months, obsessively. I probably have 20 versions of the Contents list on file! I knew when Under a Raven’s Wing came out in March 2021 I wanted my next book for PS to be a more conventional, diverse collection of short stories, and I thought I had a few that pushed in the direction of a theme. The title Lies of Tenderness occurred to me (from something else I was writing for telly), and I liked that, but soon realised that certain stories I had in mind fitted and others didn’t. (I decided my novella “Vardøger” fitted perfectly and it was a way to give it a new lease of life since the Gray Friar Press original was out of print.) But I was surprised to find myself writing new material during lockdown, so, as a result, there are 6 brand new stories out of 17, and three of the new ones are almost novella-length. The last story I wrote was a tale about a Minotaur. Strangely, that fitted right in as well! But you have to consider the place it goes as if you are planning a tasting menu for fine dining (hopefully!). By then I felt strongly what the last three were going to be, so the Minotaur slotted in somewhere in the middle. I wanted “Vardøger” dead centre of the book because I didn’t want to give it undue weight at the beginning or end; I wanted a pivot point before my more recent stories, culminating with “Orr”, which I hope leaves the reader with something to ponder.


GNoH: Were any of those stories written with the collection expressly in mind? And do you feel the impact of lockdown on those more recent tales?


SV: I always write short stories with a future collection in mind! In consideration of the new ones, “The Holocaust Crasher” wasn’t, I think, influenced by lockdown. “Outside of Truth or Consequences” was a story idea I’d had for a long, long while so, if anything, it was a bit of escapism for me. But the last three stories became very fixed in my mind as the three I wanted to end the collection with. “Agog” was written during the first lockdown, when everyone (including me) was saying: “The last thing I want to write about is a pandemic!” So I started this story about the last giant of Albion, a fantasy story unlike anything I’d written before and pretty remote from contemporary life. But as I was writing it, I started to write about The Black Death and I thought, hello, what’s this? And I just followed the story as it came out and it became about mortality. So that was that and it came sort of unbidden, so I didn’t fight it.


“Bad Language” was, again, a story idea I’d had ages ago but when my mother died of COVID in April 2020, I knew I had to write it with her death woven in as very much part of it. I recount that in almost documentary detail, and, even though the story is complete fiction, I think some of my anger and emotion filtered into it. I wrote it when Dominic Cummings was jaunting off to Barnard Castle so the sense of blame and betrayal is embedded, I think. I’m not sure where Orr came from, this lost soul who wants to reject his so-called specialness in search of his humanity. I can’t precisely tell you what that story is about but I can tell you it felt exactly about now, to me. The main character saying “You have to live with uncertainty” is a phrase I heard on the radio when a doctor was talking about the various mutations of COVID. They said “We have to get used to living with uncertainty now.” So I wanted the story to end in uncertainty and that made it have to be the last story, that question mark left in the air.


GNoH: One of the things that really struck me about “Orr” was the collision of the extraordinary with the mundane; somebody has to carry the statistical fluke of the main character, but at the same time, it’s arbitrary… or is it? How can it be? How can it not be?


SV: In a way the story is about "specialness" - the modern curse, you could say, if you spend any amount of time on social media. The cast in the story have had a life-changing brush with death and from it feel they have a great, even spiritual, purpose. My protagonist, Orr, is sceptical. He believes what happened to him was just dumb luck. But what does he have in place of what they have? There are many things in the tale that edge into the biblical. The Doubting Thomas, the revelation on the mountain top, the desert, the fruit of knowledge. (I only just realised that last one.) While I was writing it, it constantly evaded my grasp even though I felt deeply committed to something in it, quite mysteriously, and I liked that. I like that it leaves gaps for the reader to fill.


GNoH: “Outside Of Truth Or Consequences” had, I felt, a true Twilight Zone atmosphere, complete with a punch-the-air twist. Did the idea start out as a screenplay? And can you talk a little about the process of reimagining a screenplay into a story?


SV: It was written very much as a Twilight Zone story. It won't come as a huge surprise that in a story like this the twist comes first. The last paragraph came first, in fact. But no, it didn't start as a screenplay. A different story in the collection did. I co-wrote an anthology series for the BBC in 1995 and “Vardøger” was going to be the first episode in season two. But there was no season two, so I reconfigured it as a novella, which basically involved embellishing the description and focusing on the internal narrative. It still retains a televisual quality - the cross-cutting towards the end is a bit of a giveaway - but, hey.  


GNoH: A common thread of the collection are lead characters that might not immediately seem sympathetic or (pet hate term, but) ‘relatable’. Can you talk a bit about what the attraction is for you, as a writer, to such characters?


SV: I hate the term “relatable”, it makes me squirm. How can you make someone “relatable” to every single reader, Black, white, Chinese, male, female, transgender? You end up being vague and indistinct and, actually, cowardly in your lack of specificity. Plus, I am not interested in making characters likeable. It’s cheap and trivial and you don’t get depth that way. Personally as a writer, I find that to truly understand a character you have to find the damage, the scar that won’t heal, and go to the secret bad or contentious place even in your hero. I know Sam Raimi says “Horror is about creating likeable characters and then putting them through hell” – (mainly because he told me to my face when we worked together!) But that is the credo of mainstream horror and I’m about being a bit more confrontational. I want to get under the reader’s safety net and get them to question their own presumptions and morality.


The thing is this – I don’t find it interesting to have a horror subject and the story tells you “This is horrible, this person is a monster.” That’s boring. I think it is much more interesting to show a monster and say, hey, what if they’re actually like you and me? What if, in spite of the bad thing they’ve done, you find them amusing? Or the other way around – this person you assume is the hero, what if they’ve done something terrible? You don’t want them to, but there it is on the page. I think there’s a frisson in that that aims for more than opening a door and there’s a bigfoot there.


I have said before (I think I said it on my first panel at my very first convention) that a horror story about horror is - “meh”. A horror story about love, on the other hand – that’s interesting. There’s a friction between the two and somewhere to go. If you notice, there’s an epigraph at the beginning of Lies of Tenderness that says, in effect, if your story is not about love at some level, don’t bother. The purpose of stories is empathy. And I suppose these stories in particular are trying to get you to question your empathy.


GNoH: The opening tale, “The Holocaust Crasher”, feels like an excellent example of this; what the narrator does is, in the abstract, clearly monstrous, and yet he is charming and thoughtful, and I found the story both uncomfortable and moving. To what degree do you think this story is about the anxieties of creating fiction in general (a lie told in service of The Truth, and all that…)?


SV: That’s a good observation. He is a wounded individual, and the salve to that wound is a fiction. He protects himself by becoming a different person. To an extent we do that when we write fiction. We live vicariously. Perhaps it’s a coward’s way to shirk living in the present, with all the responsibilities that entails. You could say most writers are cowards. We hide from real life because it’s too messy and we can control what’s on the page. We generally watch rather than do – with the notable exception of Lord Byron, who went off to fight a war. But we can’t all be Lord Byron!


Also, I think discomfort is a beautiful thing, by the way. I was reading only yesterday that the novelist Julie Myerson says “I like reading work that makes me slightly uncomfortable. That’s why I write. I want to be on the edge of OK.” The edge of OK is exactly where I want to be.


GNoH: Do you think that’s why almost all of your work has at least one toe in the horror genre? That drive to feel around the edge of the comfort zone, or even start lifting up rocks to see what’s underneath?


SV: I don't really tend to do comfortable. The expression "cosy crime" gets my goat. What's cosy about crime? What's fun about an axe murderer? There is enough real horror to be in our lives and in the wider world. Today I received a newsletter from the International Liberty Association and read what a Ukrainian MP observed in terms of mass graves, civilians shot with their hands tied behind their backs, and women raped in front of their children. In another article I learned that one of the leading poets and writers in Iran had been found dead under suspicious circumstances. The article said: "The misogynistic clerical regime using a familiar method of applying constant pressure on artists has driven many of them towards their demise." This is the stuff of horror, to me. Not just the comforting tradition of spooky fun and B-movie nostalgia - though I'm a huge advocate of that as well. 


I happen to think it's important and interesting to question what horror is and what it is for. That's why I have at least "toe" in the genre, if not a whole limb or my entire body. The relationship between the genre I love and the world around us, be it dark or light, is what motivates and inspires me.


GNoH: The use of first person in the opening tale, and also “The Little Gift” and “Bad Language” all serve to bring us close to the protagonists, which is part of what makes those particular stories so effective. Can you talk in general about how you make the first/third person determination when writing? How early in the process do you make that decision, and have you ever changed it in revision/drafting?


SV: It sometimes takes me a ridiculously long time to figure out where the POV is coming from, who is telling the tale, or how the tale should be told, but I don’t think I’ve ever rewritten from a totally different point of view. I don’t usually put pen to paper until I feel secure in which direction I’m coming from. With “The Holocaust Crasher” it was purely my aim to be confrontational by writing it in the first person – to involve the reader with the narrator intimately. Third person would have been arm’s-length, too easy to shrug off. Similarly in “The Little Gift” and “Bad Language” (as well as “The House That Moved Next Door”) I want you deeply involved so you can feel the blow when it falls. For the Minotaur story, though, it simply seemed fun to talk in the voice of the monster.


GNoH: Picking up on the humanising of monsters, that theme feels especially strong in “Agog”, “A Meeting At Knossos”, and “Unchain The Beast”, but each story takes that in very different directions. Can you talk a bit about how each of those tales coalesced, and the different directions they took?


SV: I’d always liked the name Gogmagog – whoever that was (or were, plural) – then, staring at Gogmagog, the word “Agog” jumped out at me, which intrigued me as a title. So I had a giant and I had an image of a butt-naked giant sitting on a hill, but he had to be invisible because I didn’t want him harassed by pitchfork wielding villagers, so why was he invisible? Then I thought, what if he’d been there all through British history – so that was a bit of a lark, a bit of a yarn, playing with that. Then the dying boy came into it and it swerved into something different. I didn’t plan it like that. I initially thought it would be a sort of earthy sound poem somewhere between Ted Hughes and Dylan Thomas. So the destination wasn’t the one I set out for.


“A Meeting at Knossos” was just this simply idea of the Minotaur meeting the fallen Icarus. The contrast of the two. I wanted the creature to care for the injured boy, but I didn’t know where it went from that. I was hoping the Minotaur would be the hero of the tale, poor thing. Then I realised, by way of legend, they had good old Daedalus in common. So, again, it took a path I hadn’t expected in the end, which nevertheless felt right.


So both of those are shading the characters of the abnormal. Agog in a way symbolises “story” – the power of the tales we tell, which encircle us and strengthen us. Huge but invisible. The Minotaur is locked away, but when he is let free he has to decide the person or being he needs to be. The best drama for me is about a character who has to decide who they need to be, for instance Tyrion Lannister in Game of Thrones, or Don Draper in Mad Men. Don Draper repeatedly asks throughout the series “What do you want me to do?” I think that’s great. I don’t think a hero should always know what to do, be driven and set on a goal. They should be as existentially confused as the rest of us.


“Unchain the Beast” is more akin to a fable in which I wanted to reflect on kids growing up devoted to horror. El Coyote, the werewolf of the story, is a device, a creation that gets out of hand (as in Gothic, as in Ghostwatch) – it brings the creators fame and fortune but be careful what you wish for. And it uses the simple pleasure of making art as a contrast to the punitive activities of a tyranny. So we have fictional monster versus true monster. The Mexican setting evolved because of the political events that come from history. Reality butting up against imagination. My stomping ground, you could say.


GNoH: That political dimension of “Unchain The Beast” I found fascinating; the way the fictional monster becomes a propaganda tool of the monstrous state - in a way, the ‘purity’ of the monster is attacked, becomes diminished…


SV: Again, the juxtaposition between art and reality. Most horror fans know that Curt Siodmak's inspiration for The Wolf Man (1945) was the Nazis - ordinary humans who could become inhuman beasts. Also I was intrigued by the concept of the film Mephisto - which I haven’t actually seen - but it's about an actor who becomes a crony of Hitler, with all the benefits that entails. I wanted to ask, where does the artist stand against a totalitarian regime? Where do any of us stand? Are we so sure we would be valiant, or even true to ourselves? Are we so sure we could never be the monster?


GNoH: I can’t let you go without talking about “Adventurous”. It may be in part the huge emotional weight of the tales that surround it, but I found this story genuinely uplifting, as well as guffaw out loud funny in parts. What made you decide to take a more humorous approach with this particular tale, and how did that inform your approach to writing it?


SV: Thank you. I'm glad it was uplifting. It's admittedly light - but hopefully a palette cleanser between darker fare. I've written about the clash between suburban banality and big, mythic ideas before, in a story called “Easter”, in which a middle class couple in Bristol wake up to find a crucifixion going on in their front garden. Naturally they complain to the council. I love the contrast between ordinary life and grandeur. Maybe we'd all like to go off fighting dragons rather than having a meeting with the accounts department, but maybe it's better to find a sense of adventure in the lives we have, rather than escaping into make believe. I like escaping into make believe - so I can hardly talk. 


GNoH: Finally, what does the rest of 2022 and beyond hold for you? What are you working on now?


SV: To be brutally honest, I have found the last two years of COVID lockdown downright stultifying, not least because the TV and film industry seemed to go into suspended animation, and the death of my mother might have upended me a bit. I have always been fairly self-motivated in terms of output, but I found it difficult to think of long-haul stories (like pitches for series) and concentrated on what I could do, which was shorter stories. Having said that, last year I wrote a really dark, weird spec screenplay that is doing the rounds: I like to picture it as a film Ken Russell might have made after Gothic. I have my next collection on the back burner, which I think will be a book made up exclusively of ghost stories. And while I am waiting for news on-screen projects, I’m writing a novel, which technically might be my “first” novel (discounting the novelisation of Gothic and Netherwood - which was over 60,000 words but part of The Dark Masters Trilogy). It might be the most transgressive thing I’ve written, I won’t say what it’s about but it’s very much in line with the themes we’ve discussed in this interview. One agent a while back (not my current agent, I should add) called it “the most uncommercial thing I could ever conceive of” – so that just adds fuel to the fire for me. I’m going to write it, come what may. “Write without commitment to outcome,” as they say. If you don’t trust your heart more than an agent, you’re in trouble.

A woman parks her car outside a fateful, familiar motel. The last giant of Albion finds connection with a soul not long for this world. A lightning-struck man seeks meaning for his longing and loss.

​
In this new, startlingly wide-ranging collection, Stephen Volk explores hidden truths and secret wishes, deceit and delusion, the paths not taken, and the pang of dreams unrealised. Proof once again he is “once of the most provocative and unsettling of contemporary writers” – with seventeen tales that break boundaries, and will break your heart.

CONTENTS
Introduction by Priya Sharma
The Holocaust Crasher
The Airport Gorilla
The House That Moved Next Door
Unchain the Beast
Outside of Truth or Consequences
The Little Gift
The Black Cat
Beat the Card Home
Vardøger
A Meeting at Knossos
Sicko
The Naughty Step
Adventurous
The Flickering Light
Bad Language
Agog
Orr
Story Notes & Acknowledgements
PURCHASE A COPY DIRECT FROM PS PUBLISHING HERE ​

Ginger Snaps: Mini Interviews with Bite!


Ginger Snaps is a brand new segment for Ginger Nuts of Horror. It is a quick-fire “bite-sized” interview, where your answers relate to what you’ve been doing in the past month 



Who are you?
Who is anyone, really? I write weird horror and bizarro. My name is Matt Clarke, and I hate the name Matthew. So, naturally, I chose to the author name Matthew A. Clarke (and you’ll never know what the A. stands for!).


Your signature style:
Bizarre horror with a splash of everything else mixed in. I take a tin of weird, gently pour in the horror until it reaches a sticky consistency, then sprinkle in a little comedy, romance, sci-fi, and whatever else I can find in the pantry. 


Toot your own horn:
I started out writing horror, but it was always a little weird. Too weird to be classed as ‘standard’ horror, in some cases. Then I discovered Bizarro. Fell in love. Started my own publishing company (Planet Bizarro Press) and have met lots of brilliant authors and readers along the way.


Books read:
More than I can count on my fingers (and I have an abnormally large number of those).

Movies watched:
Not so many these days. I work a full-time job and spend every minute of my free time writing/editing etc.


Games and/or music played:
Okay. Maybe not every minute of my free time is spend writing/editing. Most recently, I’ve been playing Elden Ring. I think I’m up to about 100 hours and I still haven’t completed it.


Words written:
I’m one of the only people in history to have used every letter of the alphabet in one novel. They told me it couldn’t be done. I can’t prove it, as I had to burn it before it drove me insane.
Horror books I’ve written: Beyond Human.
Those That Remain.
Bizarro/horror books I’ve written: Coffin Dodgers.
Things Were Easier Before You Became a Giant Fucking Mantis.
The World Has Gone to Turd and the Only Way to Save It Is With a Big ‘Ol Battle Royale.
Sons of Sorrow


Future stuff:
Dead Hard – Bizarro/horror
Another, with a top-secret title.


Brain worms:
I certainly hope not.


Bio:
Matthew A. Clarke writes weird and scary stuff. You can contact him on Facebook, Amazon, and at www.planetbizarro.com

Please include a brief biography, and any links to your social media pages, website and Amazon author pages, and please attach an author photograph to the completed interview.

Stylistic Guidelines

We only really have three stylistic guidelines.

1 - No Paragraph indents

2- A single return between paragraphs

3- Film and Book titles in italics with the first letter of  each important word capitalized for example Night of the Living Dead

BIO
Elin Olausson is a fan of the weird and the unsettling. She has had stories featured in Curiouser Magazine, Luna Station Quarterly, Nightscript, and many other publications. Her debut short story collection Growth will be out in June 2022.
Elin’s rural childhood made her love and fear the woods, and she firmly believes that a cat is your best companion in life. She lives in Sweden.


WEBSITE LINKS
https://elinolausson.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/elin_writes
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elinolaussonwriter
Amazon author page: https://www.amazon.com/~/e/B08B5CRCGW


Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
I’m a Swedish writer who lives in the countryside and writes about those remote and quiet places I love—the woods, the dirt roads leading nowhere, and the abandoned houses. I’m as introverted as they come but before I learnt how to write I talked all the time, because I had so many stories to tell. Since then, the stories have changed and so have I. One thing that will never change is that I’m a crazy cat lady, and many of my characters are just as fond of pets as I am.


Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?
There are a few that come to mind immediately, but I want to keep this spoiler-free so I can’t mention them. One of my many weaknesses: characters whose rotten core doesn’t shine through until it’s too late. Or just rotten characters in general.


Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
Children’s books, actually. It sounds like a weird combination and it probably is, but many of my favorite books growing up were scary stories for kids, and I tend to write a lot of child protagonists. There are so many fantastic children’s books out there, and a lot of them are wonderfully dark and strange.


The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?
For a long time I felt that I didn’t belong in the horror genre, since my stories are not filled with ghosts or monsters, not scary in the traditional sense. It was only when I discovered the term psychological horror that I felt comfortable calling myself a horror writer. It’s frustrating that a lot of people look down on the genre or view horror fans as weirdos and/or lunatics. I hope horror can become more mainstream, and that the subgenres will get more visibility. It’s perfectly understandable that people avoid horror because they don’t like gore, for example, but plenty of horror is not the least bit gory. I believe there really is something for everyone in this genre.


A lot of good horror movements have arisen as a direct result of the socio/political climate, considering the current state of the world where do you see horror going in the next few years?
I think horror is the perfect genre for dealing with societal issues, and I’m especially fond of dystopic horror fiction. Horror about climate change and the environment will be a growing subgenre, I’d imagine.


Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?
It depends on your personality, I think. Everyone is wired differently and for some of us reading/watching horror is a way to unwind and escape reality for a while. Other people feel the same about genres like romance or crime. I personally enjoy horror because I’m afraid of practically everything. So I spend a lot of my time worrying about scary things, but at the same time I’m intrigued by them. I guess I’ve got a love/hate relationship with horror.


What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?
I can’t think of anything, really. I do wish there was more Swedish horror, though.



What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?
Recently, I’ve enjoyed stories by Matthew Chabin, Laramie Dean, and Joachim Heijndermans, to name just a few.



Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?
A reader told me that they were very moved by my story Razor, Knife and that it made them cry. That’s the sort of thing you love to hear as a writer.



What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?
Finding the time to write. It’s frustrating to have tons of ideas and no time for them.


Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?
Excessive gore is not my thing.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?
As a child I wrote mostly romantic stories, then as I grew older my writing went darker. My writing style has developed quite a bit, and also I now write in two languages instead of one.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?
To write every day, even though it’s only for a short while.


Which of your characters is your favourite?
I love them all, honestly. My favorite type of character would definitely be the frail little girl who looks all innocent but could murder you in your sleep.   

Which of your books best represents you?
For now I’ve only got the one, my short story collection Growth. It contains twenty stories of psychological horror, each and every one highly representative of my writing.


Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?
I like this passage from the story Howl:
“Something moved in the darkness, brushing against the bed. They’re watching me, she thought. They want something, and it’s bad.
Minutes later they were gone. They hadn’t touched her, but Eva felt covered in dirty fingerprints. Their smell was on her, rancid, old blood, and she wondered if it was hers now, too. If she was part of Greyling now and could never leave, because she smelled like insanity.”


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?
I’ve just released Growth, a collection of short stories published by Dark Ink Books. My next project is an audio series in Swedish.
If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?
That pets are introduced into the story only to be found killed later.


What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?
Recently I loved Bora Chung’s Cursed Bunny and Triflers Need Not Apply by Camilla Bruce. The Prophets by Robert Jones Jr. disappointed me, sadly.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
Are any of your stories inspired by real places or characters?
Yes, some of my stories are very much inspired by places in the area where I grew up. The story The Courthouse is the best example—there is an old courthouse in my childhood village that looks exactly like the one in the story. Hopefully there are no other similarities.