INTERVIEW - S.M. FENTON HAS ENTEReD THE VANISHING ROOM

The Vanishing Room captures the soul of what I’m trying to do with my work. Essentially, I want to take genre fiction and present it with a literary style. This discordant union will appeal to those who enjoy some grand descriptive writing, even though it may feel out of place in a modern setting.

S. M. Fenton is a writer of Gothic tales, quirky mystery novels, and horror fiction. His blend of supernatural rationalism comes from his equal respect for Shelley, Le Fanu, and Lovecraft on the one side and Conan-Doyle and Christie on the other. Having devoured the literary works of ghostly tales, inhaled the classic detective duos, and assaulted his eardrums with many years of doom pop and goth rock, it’s no surprise that he ended up birthing the lovechild of these influences.

WEBSITE LINKS


https://smfenton.uk/

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a programmer, technical author, and failed musician who lives in Hampshire with my wife, my daughter, and a cat who hates me and stabbed me through the eyeball to make sure I know how much.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about they way you treated them in your work.
 
Robert Mercier is a charming businessman. He’s confident, dominates the conversation, and is just the kind of personality I struggle to deal with. If he confronted me to challenge my portrayal of his character, I would crumble in an instant. He’s the kind of person that you voluntarily apologize to when they let a door slam in your face. Why am I saying sorry to this guy? Because he shines like a sparkling beacon of success.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
 
Outside of the horror genre (ghostly tales, and Gothic novels mainly), I read piles of crime fiction. Ellis Peters, Agatha Christie, M. W. Craven, and Arthur Conan-Doyle, with more planned once I have swept out the very last cobwebs of these collections. I’m a sucker for the contrasting-duo formula. Holmes/Watson, Poirot/Hastings, Andre/Price. Well, perhaps not the last one.

I’m also deeply obsessed with the lyrics that you swim in when you listen to great lyrical bands. Imagine a song based on the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, well that’s Crooked Timber, by Therapy – or a song about the glamourous life and the grisly death of an actress, that’s Kiss Them For Me by Siouxie and the Banshees. It all merges and blends onto the page.
 
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?

A great deal of my time is spent feeling like I’m “not horror enough” to claim the epithet. When I look at other writers, I think “they’re doing horror, that’s what it is, they do it so well.” But that’s what is so great about this community. It can be the ghostly visitation of The Turn of the Screw, or the sexually charged vampirism of Carmilla, or the religious devilry of The Monk,  or it can be that chest-pounding fear of Jaws, the flesh-ripping of Cannibal Nuns from Outer Space, or even the utterly haunting tragedy of Frankenstein.

While some people mistakenly think horror is a thin genre, I can only see the vast richness of work and the immense variety on offer. On top of this, other categories delve into horror when they need to reach for that darkly emotional connection with the reader. I welcome these incursions. We need to constantly challenge the edges to prevent them solidifying.

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?
 
Well, let us brace ourselves for a run of isolation-inspired works of fiction. Half the world is on lock down, there is a virus with no current vaccine, and we’re all sat watching hockey-stick line charts that trigger our anxiety. For many of us, we our getting our first taste of that chest-crushing unexplainable lethargy that comes from unacknowledged stress.

When the virus/quarantine flood arrives, let’s not dismiss it. This is a healthy way for all of us to explore this strange feeling and it will document something more human and more vital than raw statistics. We uncover vastly different perspectives on the pandemic that may challenge us and shake us from our metaphorical comfortable armchairs.

Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?

My ego demands that I mention how fiction is a healthy way to exorcise the darkness that lurks deep within our souls. However, this feels like a cheap rationalization. There is something deeply interesting about a writer being inspired to render accounts of ghastly terror; and it’s wonderful that we can read it and enjoy it without the American Psychological Association trying to diagnose us with a mental illness.

Speaking personally, there is something magic in the descriptive challenge of horror fiction. Many authors manage to make picturesque the obscene. This is one of the attractions for me as a reader.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?
 
We’re a good few-hundred years into this journey and we’re beyond the benefits afforded to the early writers. They did a great job and I’m obsessed with reading old horror books, but they could pick a couple of random traits and invent something groundbreaking. The weight of all these past works makes it hard to create something entirely new, but I’m excited when author’s reinvent and twist ideas into new shapes. When I read Class Three by Duncan P. Bradshaw, the treatment of a zombie as a fully rounded character with a perspective and thoughts blew my socks off.

In the past authors were able to write about almost anything with a far lesser degree of the fear of backlash, but this has all changed in recent years.  These days authors must be more aware of representation an the depiction of things such as race and gender in their works, how aware are you of these things and what steps have you taken to ensure that your writing can’t be viewed as being offensive to a minority group? 


We are all still participants in this broad discussion and every day we learn and progress. We often stumble blindly into silly mistakes, so we need to be empathic on both sides of the conversation. When we become to emotionally myopic, we only move apart from one another when we should be seeking to come together. If you want to tackle this issue, you need to make your own bias visible. If your book is set in the UK and has no particular reason to be otherwise skewed, around 8% of your characters should be Asian. If it’s less than this, you’ve uncovered a bias. When you are undertaking this self-exploration, be honest about your character treatment. Achieving a balance of female characters is not an achievement if they are all doe-eyed, two-dimensional, tripping-up-while-running-away types. I would love to say I’m a trailblazer on this, but I’m as flawed as the next privileged westerner.

Does horror fiction perpetuate it’s own ghettoization?
 
I don’t believe there is some self-harming agenda in horror. The community suffers from the beatings it gets from the very people that borrow its devices. Just remember there is an unrivalled history of this wonderful corner in fiction and draw strength from those great fore-runners. There is no such thing as “proper writing”. If there were, we would all tire of it.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of?
 
M. W. Craven is producing excellent crime with a horror twist starting with The Puppet Show, and Gareth Powell’s Ragged Alice is one of my favorite books of recent times with its supernatural theme. Autumn Christian has been going from strength to strength, and I’m always wondering what Bradshaw is going to come up with next.

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?


In a Glass Darkly is the lightning rod that energized me to write. It is probably the most influential work in my writing. From the world of movies, I watched Nightmare on Elm Street and Scanners when I was far too young and they scared the heck out of me. When I get over-tired, Robert Englund chases me up the stairs and into my bed.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?

It’s early days for my writing output, but having been an active member of several bands, I have learned there is value in all reviews. One small but prominent magazine published an article that focused heavily on my lack of talent as a singer. They dwelled on this for several paragraphs, entirely missing the opportunity to mention my guitar skills were little better than the singing. I still loved the review because I had made it into the magazine! Every time someone spends time with my work, I’m grateful.

What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult?

There are two giant pits filled with spikes that I find myself impaled upon regularly. The first is research. Two people sit down on a bench next to a rose bush, which should be simple enough. Six hours later, I’ve made sure that the rose grows in that region, flowers at the appropriate time of year, is the correct colour, can tolerate the soil, and myriad tangential facts that end up supporting one or two brief references.

The second bear trap that I willingly step into is making “just one more pass-through”. Each time my heart believes I have finished, my brain starts eating away at me. Before I know it, I’ve opened up the manuscript and I’m making another edit.

Both of these issues seem to point towards some terrible insecurity that I haven’t yet faced up to. Thanks for helping me work through it.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?
 
This will surprise many people that know me, but there is no latent Fanny Hill coming from my pen. Erotic scenes are not on the cards. Ever. Asides from this, I dare not dismiss anything else as my current work in process surprised me a great deal when it started to pop out of my fingers.

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning?

Names fall directly within the category of “research” for me. Many hours are spent getting the name geographically sound and I’m always looking for subtle connections to wind around my story elements. Without giving too much away, there is not a name in anything I write that doesn’t hint at something. Many of these connections will only ever exist in my brain and I don’t expect people to try and work them all out.
 
Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

My first published book was a technical book with a company called Apress. I have since moved from non-fiction into fiction. This was a tremendously difficult transition to make and it taught me just how challenging it is to maintain all the lies you create during a story. My current writing feels more fluid, and I seem to have more control than I did while writing The Vanishing Room, which thrashed and fought against me like a wilful horse in the hands of a new stable boy.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?

Though I cannot attribute this advice to whichever great friend passed it on to me, I was told that when the writing won’t happen to change my location. Finding somewhere new to write always sparks new ideas and takes the work in new directions.

To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why?


Richard Beckett is something of an adopted child. He needs looking after because he’s young, cocky, and naïve. Sophie Harlock is difficult to write, because she is so different to me in every way. While I feel guilty when I may have upset someone, she literally doesn’t care. Perhaps I wish I were more like her.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?

The Vanishing Room captures the soul of what I’m trying to do with my work. Essentially, I want to take genre fiction and present it with a literary style. This discordant union will appeal to those who enjoy some grand descriptive writing, even though it may feel out of place in a modern setting.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?
 
There is a passage in The Vanishing Room that tingles several old emotional scars, which are painful and enjoyable at the same time. This paragraph sums up my awkward teenage years in a slightly elaborate way. Richard is at a party and they are playing a game where someone tucks a red ribbon into their clothes to be torn out. It’s a symbolic slaughter of summer to bring on the autumn:

Pulled into the swirl, I realised Hannah was our next mock-sacrifice, taking her spot in the centre of the maelstrom. She pointed towards me and made a gesture that told me I was to be the one to rip out her silk heart. A nauseous wave of nervousness made my muscles stiffen as I was bumped and cajoled into place before her. The music became muddled and formless, mere noise, as I reached out my hand. The smallest thread of the scarlet strip danced before me and I reached to take it. My anxious disposition and propensity for imaginative notions when under stress made me feel as if I were about to reach into her ribcage and search her core by touch to find the beating heart within; a strangely petrifying thought.
 
Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

The Vanishing Room was my debut. It was like the first bike race I had as a kid. I went fantastically fast, hit the front brake on the finishing line, and spent a good amount of time flat on the floor, dazed, and wondering what happened.
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My current work in process will be stylistically similar, although it came as a total surprise to me and has a different pace to its predecessor.
 
If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

The problem with a cliché is that it starts off amazing, which is why everyone wants to use it. The travesty is that we turn the brilliant into the mundane through our very love of it. As a tortured writer, which is banality itself, I ought to secure the glasshouse before I proceed further. Nevertheless, the “it’s all over, no wait it’s not” ending to horror films has become very tired.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?
 
Having already mentioned both Ragged Alice and The Puppet Show, these are the two titles that enter the ring to punch it out for the title of “last great book”. They are such different styles that I find it impossible to eliminate either. The last book that disappointed me was Beckford’s Vathek. It failed to live up to my pre-conceptions and seemed rather pale compared to The Monk, which has many parallels and flawless execution.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
 
I’d love to tell you who will supply the soundtrack when they turn my book into a film, thanks for asking. We’ll be opening with the rich tones of The Delays, swimming past some doom-pop with The Cure, raising the volume with the dark post-grunge of Bushbaby, and rolling credits with Rapture-era Siouxie and the Banshees.

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A haunted inn. A scarecrow festival. A cursed room. When Richard Beckett quits his job to travel the world, he soon learns that he is a magnet for trouble. His attraction to the unearthly beauty of a young married woman leads him to a strange room in a dilapidated inn. Can the headlines about mysterious disappearances be explained rationally, or will he become the latest victim of The Vanishing Room?

"In a world of body-horrors, slashers, and splatter movies Fenton returns to the romance of vintage psychological horror."

Paralysed and in pitch darkness, I was assaulted by the dust that rose from the thick fabric I now rested on. It burned my airways with each shallow breath; and the tiny motes stuck to my dry eyes, causing a fierce itch that I was helpless to remedy. The rush of panic lasted several minutes and though I suffered it in both stillness and silence, my mind screamed and thrashed.

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