 David J Thacker was born in 1964 and has worked in the theatre for most of his life. He is the author of a novella, The Red House, which was long-listed for a British Fantasy Award. He also wrote a play for Young People (S.O. T. – Save Our Theatre), which was performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2001, and has penned the Libretto for a modern Oratorio, performed in 2000. He co-wrote and directed the 2014 Retro Hugo Awards Ceremony for the 72nd World Science Fiction Convention, LonCon3, and directed the 2014 Hugo Awards Ceremony at the same event. He is the Deputy Division Head for Events at Worldcon 77 in Dublin, 2019. Once: A Belmouth Tale is his first published novel. Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself? I’m from the UK, an ex-pat Northerner who is currently living close to London. I’ve loved Horror fiction throughout my life (from watching Children of the Stones and devouring dog-eared copies of the old Pan Horror collections onwards) and have written short stories for many years. In real life, I work in Theatre Administration - which is nowhere near as glamorous as it sounds (and it doesn’t sound at all glamorous!). To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, 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. Well, as with most horror novels or films, some characters are introduced just to be killed, so I’d guess any one of them could legitimately complain to me. And most of the rest of the characters are made to suffer in one way or another, so they could have a beef with me too. In fact, given that the central conceit of my book Once: A Belmouth Tale is that fictional, folkloric characters can come to life, I’m not sure I like this line of questioning at all… Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing? Many (many!) years ago, I studied Medieval Literature and Theatre at University and I think I got my love of the weird and folklore from that. The Medieval world was one where a demon could lurk behind any stone or street corner and where Death was a constant presence, but it was also a world that was striving to find meaning in, well, everything. It needed to collate and classify as much as it could and if it couldn’t then it looked at the patterns of nature and surmised that evidently all things should follow that. So, if we had Monks and Priests on earth, so there should be the same under the sea (yes, this is where Monkfish comes from), and if the Bible doesn’t tell us about the childhood of Christ, we’ll just make it up and fill in the gaps! It was a wonderfully chaotic yet structured, grounded yet fantastical world and I hope I carry some of that through to my work. 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? I think that Horror is a very broad church, even if it isn’t always seen as such, and has subtleties that need to be brought out again. The ghost stories of M R James or Shirley Jackson’s Hill House are subtle, beautiful, terrifying works that don’t seem to have a place in today’s definition (although the loose-but-oh-so-right adaptation of Hill House recently tried hard to change that). There needs to be the breakout book (or film) that re-establishes creepiness to our genre and reminds the non-Horror loving audience of what it can achieve. 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, given the current political climate on both sides of the Atlantic, we might see a rise in works about loss of identity – about outsidership and The Other, possibly told from that outsider’s point of view as they struggle to exist in a world they no longer recognize. At the moment, it feels as if the people who never thought they had control are now getting it, for good or ill, and the ones who were traditionally in control have been ousted and are powerless – there’s a topsy-turvy feel to the world that is sure to be reflected in all fiction, not just Horror. Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it? It’s a cliché, but I think it can be cathartic. It can let you experience dark things outside your everyday experience but in a safe way and push you to recognize your own limits. It’s a challenging genre that, at its best, asks a lot from its readers yet hides inside pop culture. And it has a certain ‘guilty pleasure’ aspect to it as well, as if you are doing something slightly dirty but wholly pleasurable. Does horror fiction perpetuate it’s own ghettoization? If there is a ghettoization, I think it lies at the feet of the publicists, for films or books. Lots of works could easily be considered Horror but are sold as Thrillers – Stephen King’s Bill Hodges books were sold as Detective fiction or thrillers primarily when they don’t stray very far from his ‘horror’ works in reality. Se7en is pure horror but sold as a dark thriller. The Charlie Parker novels of John Connolly have cleverly moved into a world that is pure fantasy and horror, but are still marketed as pschological thrillers. Horror is a many faceted thing, from a slight creepiness at the edges of a story to out and out gore, but too often only the gore is seen as defining the genre. What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of? Me, naturally (insert cheesy-but-cute grin). But seriously, I have admired the work of Rio Youers ever since I started reading him in PS Publications’ editions – he has a lovely balance of grounded fantasy and horror reminiscent of Joe Lansdale. I’ve yet to read his latest work, The Forgotten Girl, but I have it and I’m looking forward to it. What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author? Anything by Ray Bradbury. Blind Voices by Tom Reamy. Harlan Ellison. Exorcist 3. Lots and lots of books of folklore. Alien. The soundtrack work of Peter Gabriel, which always forms a backdrop to my writing. Guillermo del Toro. An American Werewolf In London. Far too many other things to mention. Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you? Stephen Volk, creator of Ghostwatch (another influence) and The Dark Masters trilogy, said of my novella The Red House that it “captures the ambient fear of growing up, reminding me of Tim Lebbon and Graham Joyce, and at times evokes the spirit of Machen" and being put in such illustrious company by someone I respect greatly really made me feel that I could actually be taken seriously as an author. What aspects of writing to do you find the most difficult? Not wanting to be glib about any of the creative process, which can be hard at times and downright impossible at others, but the thing I find hardest is what comes after it, especially in the world of self-published books, and that’s Promotion. I’m not a naturally forceful person (surprising for someone who prefers time with a keyboard, eh?) and I always seem to apologise for trying to tell anyone about my work. I meet industry professionals who could possibly help give my work more exposure and I don’t say anything for fear of seeming pushy. I know it’s a necessary evil, and one that even established publishers are putting more and more onto the author, but I do find it hard. Is there one subject you would never write about as an author? I don’t know. I haven’t found it yet. I’m not a fan of torture porn, but mainly because it bores me. But, that said, if I came up with a good reason to write it, if I suddenly had that Jack Ketchum moment where it could work in the service of something else, you bet I’d give it a go. How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning? It’s funny but my current novel (and, I hope, a few more) is set in the fictional town of Belmouth, which I came up with after trying to find a name that seemed to belong on the English Dorset coast (typical towns: Bournemouth, Weymouth). It was only after I finished it and the book was out with Beta Readers that someone said to me, ‘Oh, you mean like Hell Mouth’. Which upset me a bit because a) that’s not what Belmouth is – it’s just a normal seaside town where strange things happen and b) it was too late to change it and darn it, I like Belmouth! So, I suppose you could say I chose it based on the sound but I possibly should have thought harder about what that sound was! Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years? I think the biggest developments I’ve made have been in realizing my preoccupations and themes – Identity is a very strong motivator in my work; where it comes from, what it means – and in learning to deal with characters. I started with stories that had one or two characters in them – basically talking heads – but hopefully now I can command larger, more fully-formed casts who interact with themselves and their world in a realistic way (even if they are fighting monsters at the time). What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing? “Carry on.” Getting Once: A Belmouth Tale published was a long hard slog. It was accepted by four successive publishers, all of whom kept it for a year or more (two, in one case) before returning it because they were no longer running the imprint they wanted it for, or they had changed their direction for new works, or in one case, they went under. It was very frustrating and over these years, I found it increasingly difficult to write as I got more and more of my hopes dashed. But what I did write, people liked and it was their support that convinced me to go the self-published route through Amazon, so that hopefully more people can now read the work and enjoy it. 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? My favourite character is always the one I’m working on at the moment – no matter how obstinate or recalcitrant they are being at the time. At the moment, I’m writing about a homicidal man whose fingers drip electricity and, as it is a first person narrative, I’m living in his (rather weird) head. So, I have to love him or I can’t see how he would react to things. My least favourite character is probably the one who doesn’t work out, who shows a lot of promise but then his story just fades in my mind because I can’t make it work and he’s not helping me. He lives in a drawer somewhere, hoping that I’ll come back for him someday but we both know that I won’t. Or if I do it will be only to cannibalize elements of him and we’ll both have to live with the spectre of his initial faded promise. (And people wonder why I write weird fiction…) For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why? That’s a difficult one, as there are only two books out there at the moment, and I’d say they both represent different sides of me. The Red House is quite elegiac and deals with friendship (which is very important to me) and is like a small quiet whisper in your ear. Whereas Once: A Belmouth Tale delves deep into folklore and storytelling (also very important to me) and, whilst quite romantic at heart, also likes to shed a bit of blood from time to time. I’d say it’s more of a statement of intent for what’s to come from me. Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us? In Once: A Belmouth Tale, I have the line ‘After all, it made a better story that way’ and I get chills every time I read it. Unfortunately, to tell you why would give too much away, but I think it’s a great dark punchline to an incident. Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next? My latest book is Once: A Belmouth Tale and it is the story of a Storytelling Festival in an out-of-season English seaside town and the spate of killings that are somehow connected to it. It blends folklore with modern horror to create a journey into one man’s nightmare, one that will have him doubting everything and change his life irrevocably. It features monsters and romance, twisted stories and gory deaths and I’m very proud of it. My next long work – after I finish the short tale of the murderer with the electric hands (see above) – is probably going to take another piece of English folklore and push it into the modern age. I don’t want to say too much about it at the moment because it’s still forming, but I think its quite original and could even be a series of books. Well, it’s that or I do have another Belmouth tale to tell… If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice? If it’s in films, it has to be the Cat Scare. You know, where something spooky is about to happen and then a cat jumps out instead. (This can also, thanks to the lunacy that was Aliens v Predator, be known as the Penguin Scare). In fact, jump scares in general seem to be all that horror filmsare about these days, when actually they are just one of the tools in the box and, even then, best used sparingly. What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you? Okay, bizarrely, I’m going to cite a limited series comic as the best book I’ve read recently, and that’s Exit Stage Left – The Snagglepuss Chronicles by Mark Russell and Mike Feehan. It takes a not-particularly well-remembered Hanna-Barbera cartoon character and, whilst staying true to him, transposes him into 1950s America where he becomes a target for the House of Un-American Activities and the McCarthyite witch hunt. It’s a masterful blend of actual history, fantasy and commentary and I love it. The last book that disappointed me has to be something I tried by Chris Carter (I can’t even remember which book). He was sold as the great thriller writer but I found that he had a habit of stretching things out too much, playing the same scene from different angles and perspectives without adding anything new. It could have just been that book, I could be maligning him, but it wasn’t for me. What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do? And what would be the answer? “What did you think of the multimillion-dollar film adaptation of your work?” “It was fine – but the sequel I’m writing will be even better!”  The out-of-season English seaside town of Belmouth seemed like the perfect venue for a Storytelling Festival. Until the killings started. At first, Festival Organiser and Storyteller Dan Edwards isn’t that concerned by the news reports. But then it becomes obvious that the Festival is connected in some way. More importantly, the stories he is telling appear to be coming to life… ‘Once: A Belmouth Tale’ combines traditional folk tales with modern horror to create a journey into one man’s nightmare, one that will have him doubting everything and change his life irrevocably. Not all stories end with Happily Ever After. Includes 4 original illustrations from cult online artist @dansmonsters   Comments are closed.
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