Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m Fred Venturini, a lifetime fan of the horror genre and a novelist with a new horror/action book hitting the streets, To Dust You Shall Return.
I was set on fire when I was 10, so I’m a burn survivor. That’s about as close as it gets to living out a horror movie in real life.


Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

Without question, the villain of my latest book, known only as the Mayor. Imagine that Clark Kent grew up as a prick and decided to dominate and torture Smallville, and that’s the Mayor. He’s obsessed with inflicting pain and crushing the hope of the people he sees as his subjects and playthings.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

The satire and minimalism of Chuck Palahniuk’s work, and the writing community that rallied around him in the early 2000’s. Once I discovered his novels, I started to experiment more with voice, with tense, with POV. I felt the limits of writing lift and my horror sensibilities turned into pure transgressive fiction.

Another big influence is 80’s and 90’s action cinema, and the best action movies of the 2000’s. I always joke that I write books because I grew up in a small town, didn’t know how to make movies, and wanted an unlimited budget. I try to write cinematically and my favorite archetype is the “reactivated badass” that you find in many of these stories. I also love how kinetic and funny action movies can be. You won’t find better audience movies than a well-executed horror movie or a slam-bang action movie.


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?

When you say “horror” to most people, they think of iconic slasher movies and Stephen King. This is my unofficial poll, of course. The problem is that horror has so many distinct subgenres and almost everyone has one they just can’t handle, so if they can’t handle the deep end of the pool, they simply refuse to jump in.
We’re left with a reflex to Trojan horse it into stories without calling it horror, which may soften those assumptions over time.

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?


Because of the pandemic and the political climate, I think we’ll see “living with the monster” as more of a theme vs. fighting the monster. To me that unlocks the potential for a lot of new stories and a deeper sense of dread and terror.

Horror has always been on the cutting edge of commenting on social justice, and I think that trend will continue and we’re going to see some books and movies we’ll be talking about for decades coming out of this era.

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

Horror is scary, and scary is fun. It’s the same reason a roller coaster is popular.
Another, deeper reason I’ve wrestled with is that it makes us happier. It’s forced “negative visualization” that is scientifically proven to increase happiness and contentment, and has been practiced for a couple thousand years, most notably by the Stoics.

And when you’ve had a shitty day, week, month, or year, or maybe even a shitty life entirely, at least you’re not getting your face wrecked by Freddy Krueger or getting eaten by Pennywise. 

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

Going right to meta and self-referential commentary as an evolution has skipped over some rich storytelling territory.

Instead of commenting on the tropes, I think horror stories exist that can use the established rules to build new stories and worlds without the need to explain those rules. It’s a shortcut and there are interesting, peripheral stories to tell.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of?

The fresh voices and points of view from authors like Stephen Graham Jones, Gabino Iglesias, and Gwendolyn Kiste have blown me away.
Now, SGJ has been writing his tail off for a long time and I think finally, just now, he’s starting to get his due in wider circles.
But the other two? Look’em up if you don’t already know them, and you’re in for a treat.



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

I had a capsule in The New York Times and it was positive, so I’ll never forget that one. I certainly don’t sweat bad reviews and find them important to make the good ones stick.

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

Marketing your books! Selling eight hours of entertainment for $15 has never been harder. Publishers don’t exactly know how to do it well, and aren’t building new authors. They’re investing in the big, bankable authors and a bunch of lottery tickets, waiting for someone to stick before they push their chips in.

Marketing as an author is exhausting and overbearing and it seems like everyone has a book they’re pushing. I just wish I could write and publish without trying so hard to sell the book.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

I would write about anything, without limit. But I’d be careful about publishing certain things. There are certain points of view I’d be afraid I couldn’t handle, and I’m not qualified to handle.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Writers in their formative years stick to the familiar, as I did. So, you run the risk of feeling and sounding like a knockoff. My writing hasn’t developed as much as my voice has, and the confidence to get away from the familiar and do bold things on the page. I’ve settled into this groove of just accepting I like what I like, and they can exist together: horror and action, horror and superheroes/sci-fi, horror and YA love stories.


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

I was at an event with Chuck Palahniuk and he gave out a piece of advice I’ll aways remember: live an interesting life. I see a lot of teenage and college-age wannabe writers that don’t have anything interesting to say about the world and just want to be published, so I think this advice is critical.
And at my age (40 if you care to ask), it’s still advice I take to heart.


Which of your characters is your favourite?

Dale Sampson of The Heart Does Not Grow Back was my first protagonist, and man, did I put that kid through the wringer. Somehow he made it out on the other side with his soul in-tact, and he’s out there somewhere even though the world thinks he’s dead, with a gift he’ll be strong enough to share with the world someday.


Which of your books best represents you?

This one is easy: The Escape of Light. If it seems like an outlier in my canon to have a YA love story, it’s because The Escape of Light is the book I had to write just to get it out of my system and open up the pipeline.

It’s about a burn survivor (like me) who shares a couple of unexpected tragedies with me from real-life events.

The novel represents me best mostly because of my belief in resilience as a critical skill and how we can find happiness under any circumstances if we just stop looking everywhere but inside of ourselves.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

I’ve always liked “The suffering of human potential comes from the lack of a true pinnacle.” It aligns with my philosophy, that our misery comes from striving and we fetishize never being satisfied as “drive.”


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

To Dust You Shall Return is a passion project of mine I’ve always wanted to see in print, with the things I love the most mashed into one, crazy story.

I wanted to take a classic “reactivated badass” action hero character and drop him smack dab into a Stephen King plot.

I’m working on a novel now that is a different take on the slasher subgenre. I’m interested in why, after being attacked so many times by the same obviously supernatural killer, do the citizens choose to keep living there? What kind of person is attracted to a clearly haunted place that is massacred every few years? Imagine a prestige TV series called Haddonfield and that’s the vibe I’m going for.


If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

Oh, a few. First of all, when’s the last time any of us experienced a car that wouldn’t start?

No one falls down all that much when running for their lives.
And I’m over dumb characters. Stop doing silly things like splitting up or running away from a car without at least hopping off the road.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

Great is such a big word - I’d have to say Stephen Florida. The novel blew me away, and it has this unreliable narrator that intrigues and repels you for the length of the book. While it’s quite the literary novel, I think horror fans would dig it, you feel like something terrible is around the corner at any moment and that Stephen is capable of literally anything in pursuit of his goals.

Writing is a tough enough gig; I just can’t bring myself to call out an author or his/her/their novel for being disappointing in a public space.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

Can you do a really good impression of Arnold Schwarzenegger?

Answer: I know everyone has an Ah-nold impression but I have lovingly crafted mine over the course of many years and rarely get a chance to use it.

WEBSITE LINKS
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Website: https://fredventurini.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/venterminator
Twitter: https://twitter.com/fredventurini
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/venterminator/


Book buy links
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Dust-You-Shall-Return/dp/1684426340/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=to+dust+you+shall+return&qid=1621954947&s=books&sr=1-1
Barnes & Noble: https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/to-dust-you-shall-return-fred-venturini/1137992228?ean=9781684426348
Bookshop: https://bookshop.org/books/to-dust-you-shall-return-9781684426348/9781684426355
IndieBound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781684426348

"Venturini doesn't write in words and sentences. Instead, he lines the page with barbwire, concertina wire and spike strips that deliver the story deep into the reader's skin." –#1 New York Times Bestselling Author Chuck Palahniuk
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A town ruled by evil. A man ruled by darkness. Only one can survive.

Curtis Quinn is a Chicago mob legend with a particular set of skills and a price on his head. When the woman he loves disappears, Curtis follows her trail to the occult town of Harlow, where no one is allowed to leave, and an enigmatic, sinister overlord known only as “the Mayor” rules by an autocratic regime.

Beth Jarvis is a plucky teenager unwrapping the secrets of her hometown―Harlow―and the mysterious ceremony that awaits her on her eighteenth birthday. What Beth doesn’t know is the truth about her sister Kate, who escaped their strange town over a decade ago and has evaded the Mayor and his disciples ever since.

What Curtis doesn’t know is that Kate is the woman he’s fallen in love with, and she’s running from a threat far greater than the mobsters who want to kill him. His fate collides with Beth’s as she tries to escape Harlow and the disgusting fate that awaits her, and Curtis finds himself unraveling a mystery that leads to an impossible and terrifying conclusion―that the Mayor of Harlow is more than just a man, and the hardest target he’s ever tried to kill.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a former musician turned author and I still don’t know which is the more ‘real’ job.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

The villain from He Waits. If you’re meeting that guy, it’s already over.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

Roald Dahl’s work. I love the way he approaches the logistics of fantastic things. Dreams have to be sucked in through tubes and spat into our ears, witches have to wear wigs because they’re bald and so their scalps itch… that fascinates me. That and 90s comic books.

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?

It’s a blessing and a curse; when I first released The Stone Man I billed it as a ‘sci-fi horror’ novel, as it’s a scary book. Then people came in expecting gore, and it isn’t that kind of book, so there were a handful of outraged reviews. Then when I changed it to a ‘sci-fi thriller’ novel people complained that it was too dark. To break past it I think the horror community needs to branch a little out of traditional horror tropes and look at work that is a little more on the edges of what is seen to be ‘horror’.

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 paranoia about misinformation and ‘the man’ is going to proliferate dramatically.

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 release, I think. Something so removed from most people in the west’s relatively safe everyday lives.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

Psychological horror that doesn’t always turn into a straight-up slasher.

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

Not a review, but a hilariously smug email. The guy sent an example of how one of my chapters could have been better after berating me for several paragraphs. I wouldn’t have minded, but his chapter was awful.

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

The isolation. Oof.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

I don’t think so.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

I’ve learned more about agency for characters and objectives, and the need to clarify them. That’s very important.

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

See above!
Which of your characters is your favourite?

Probably Charlie from In the Darkness, but Andy from The Stone Man will always be my favourite curmudgeon.

Which of your books best represents you?

Probably The Stone Man.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

I do like this one: Different sides of us, brought out by different situations, and we can never truly know who we will be from one day to the next. You can be one of them more than you are any of the others, and decide that is you ... but when you are caught unawares, the dice of your personality is rolled and the outcome is not given by any means.

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

My last book is You See the Monster (coming out on June 14th!) and the next will be the third book in my Stone Man series.
If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

The supernatural antagonist only teasing its victims until the third act for no reason and then disappearing when someone else walks into the room. Drives me insane. Why would it wait?? Very, very annoying. It’s why I wrote You See the Monster!

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

I’d say Bird Box was the last great one I read, and I wouldn’t like to say which one disappointed me.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

“How about a free massage, sir?”

Luke Smitherd is the author of the #1 bestselling novel THE STONE MAN, shortlisted for Audible Book of the Year 2015, recently followed by it’s sequel THE EMPTY MEN. He also created the #1 bestsellers IN THE DARKNESS, KILL SOMEONE, THE PHYSICS OF THE DEAD, and THE MAN WITH ALL THE ANSWERS as well as his new modern horror novel YOU SEE THE MONSTER, out June 14th.

A former singer and guitarist, Luke now writes full time for a living. He can't quite believe it. He currently travels and writes, and ignores cheap jibes about not having a 'proper job'. 

WEBSITE LINKS www.lukesmitherd.com
Amazon Author Page
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Facebook.com/smitherdbooks
Instagram.com/lukesmitherdyall
Twitter.com/lukesmitherd

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

Sure! My name is Luke, and I'm an avid reader and aspiring author of horror, sci-fi, and fantasy. I'm also an experimental musician and passionate outdoorsman. If I'm not working, writing, or recording, I'm probably somewhere far outside of cell phone service.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

Bocephus Bodine from Early Retirement, no question. He's a racist, homophobic bigot who thinks himself above repercussions due to family connections in high places. In short, a rather disagreeable fellow.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

I'd say my two biggest influences outside of the horror genre would be George R. R. Martin and Joe Abercrombie. Fantasy was my first love, and it was Martin's exceptional work in A Song of Ice and Fire that inspired me to seriously pursue my childhood dream of writing fiction.

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 that we will see a sizable influx of plague-based apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic horror due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While this sub-genre has been consistently popular for decades (especially if you include zombie fiction under this umbrella), it's been just over a century since humanity has had to face a global catastrophe of this magnitude. Prior to last summer, few people alive today had ever experienced firsthand the kind of overwhelming apocalyptic dread upon which works like Stephen King's The Stand or Cormac McCarthy's The Road are predicated. I predict that the coming years will see a host of more personal, poignant, and chillingly relatable stories published in this sub-genre.

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

I think that the appeal of explicit gore in media stems from a wider sociocultural shift away from localized agrarian living towards a globally integrated and industrialized lifestyle. Contemporary western culture has largely separated us from our mortality by sterilizing our conception of death. Our death rituals are performed in pristine funeral homes over meticulously embalmed and life-like cadavers, our meat is skinned, trimmed, and packaged in neat portions before being sold in white-tiled and coldly lit supermarkets, etc. We're not forced to confront the inevitability of death or the nature of our bodies as briefly animated sacks of flesh in any real or visceral way.

Violence and death are inherent aspects of the human experience, wether we like it or not. The less that we confront them in our daily lives, the more we stoke a primal need to engage with them via our art. In this sense, I would argue that the prevalence and popularity of extreme horror fiction is a positive cultural sign in that we are turning to fantasy, rather than reality, to engage the least savory manifestations of our collective human psyche.


What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

I think a greater effort could be made to incorporate the strengths of different sub-genres within horror as a whole. Why do we split splatterpunk apart from psychological horror? Why are creature features distinct from Lovecraftian fare? I feel like there's a level of elitism peppered throughout the publishing industry that prevents appreciation and synthesis between various approaches, and that same elitism trickles down to the genre level as well.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?

As embarrassing as it is to admit, I'm fairly out-of-the-loop when it comes to my fellow up-and-comers in the genre. As I mentioned earlier, I'm a fantasy aficionado first and foremost, so my reading habits still tend towards the more established, mainstream side of horror. But my reading list is growing all the time, and I can't wait to dive deeper and deeper into the underground of horror!

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

One reviewer remarked that Early Retirement “walks that edge well of original and fan-fiction” in specific reference to John W. Campbell Jr.'s Who Goes There. I found this remark fascinating because I have never once read any of Campbell's work. Though I have since watched (and loved) John Carpenter's The Thing (a film adaptation of Who Goes There), I was unfamiliar with the story while writing Early Retirement. I am perennially enthralled by the evolution of individualized narratives into wider cultural myths and motifs over time, and this is such a beautiful example of that phenomenon. Campbell's work so profoundly impacted those writers who have influenced myself that his narrative fingerprint can be found in my own work, despite my never having read him myself. It really is incredible the impact that one voice can have on the evolution of a genre or medium as a whole.

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

Just sitting down and hammering out a first draft is by far my least favorite part of the process. I love big-picture world-building and plotting, and I get a ton of satisfaction out of revision. But the step in between, the actual process of forcing a giant, amorphous blob of ideas into a coherent string of words, can be extremely frustrating.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

If pressed for a one-word answer, I would say no. I believe that imposing limits on one's artistic endeavors is an ultimately self-defeating practice that stifles creativity and shackles creators to mediocre ideas in the pursuit of “playing it safe.”

That being said, however, I do think that it is crucial for any artist to thoughtfully examine the social context and cultural ramifications of their work before putting it out into the world. I disagree with the popular notion that some topics are strictly off-limits, but I do think that the more sensitive any given subject matter might be, the more crucial it is to treat the subject with care, compassion, and attentiveness.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Nearly ten years ago I decided out of the blue that I was going to sit down and compose a sprawling, epic fantasy series unlike any the world had ever seen. My debut novel would stand beside the likes of The Fellowship of The Ring, Dune, and A Game of Thrones as a pillar within the pantheon of great works which have ushered in new eras of speculative fiction.


Obviously this did not happen for a multitude of reasons, chief among them being that I had zero writing experience and was therefore not very good at it. So I would say my biggest growth has come in humbling myself, tempering my expectations, and taking the craft of writing seriously for what it is: a painstaking and difficult endeavor that takes even the greatest storytellers a lifetime to perfect.

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

I've always loved this quote from Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft: “Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

I feel like that's such a simple, yet profound statement. Nothing was ever accomplished by waiting around. If you want to achieve something, you have to just do it.

Which of your characters is your favourite?

That's a tough call, but I would probably say the mercenary-turned-community leader Krevynyn from my upcoming fantasy novel, The Chains of Fate. He is my first attempt at a genuine redemption arc, and I really enjoyed cultivating his growth from cynical, bloodthirsty nihilist to upstanding steward of a burgeoning spiritual movement.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

I really like this passage from Early Retirement, as I feel that it conveys a lot about the story's world and characters in a single paragraph:

“Cap allowed himself a tired smirk at the notion of calling his last shift 'last night' in a place where the sun never shone. When he was a kid, way back when the schools still taught general ed alongside vocational studies, his fifth year teacher said that Old Gaia spun on its own axis faster than it orbited its sun, resulting in regular cycles of day and night. Supposedly, that was how mankind had developed the twenty-four hour standard clock that was still used all over the galaxy. It seemed an absurd notion to Cap. In a world with darkness and light for all, how did they split up the rich from the poor?”

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

Early Retirement is a novelette that follows the story of Cap Jenkins, an average Joe working in an off-planet manufacturing facility, through two nights on the job as his equipment begins to malfunction and his co-workers grow increasingly strange. Without diving too deep into spoiler territory, the story sets out to examine toxic workplace dynamics, paranoia, and social inequity in a futuristic setting with a splash of body horror and just a hint of black comedy.

My next piece will be a novella that builds upon the workplace horror premise of Early Retirement while swapping out the dystopian sci-fi elements for dark fantasy. This novella, along with Early Retirement and one other story set in a contemporary American setting, will form a trio of shorts that I plan to release as a compilation titled Night Shift: Volume I early next year.

If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

I've come across a handful of horror novels that often turn to gratuitous rape scenes for shock value. It's a cheap tactic that alienates readers who have experienced sexual violence firsthand, and it does little to inspire the more cerebral dread and terror that most readers come to the genre for.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

After about three years of on-and-off reading, I finally finished Glen Cook's Black Company series last month. The final installment, Soldiers Live, was a great novel that really pulled the whole series together.

On the other hand, I recently got about halfway through Richard Matheson's What Dreams May Come before ultimately shelving it. I really enjoyed I Am Legend and was intrigued to see what else the horror great had to offer, but Dreams just didn't click with me in the same way that Legend did. I think the next Matheson that I'll pick up will be Hell House, which I've heard nothing but good things about.

Ginger Nuts Of Horror (GNoH): Welcome to Ginger Nuts of Horror! Thanks for agreeing to be interviewed. I guess my immediate first question, Dr. Tingle, is; why horror? And why now?


Dr. Chuck Tingle (DCT): well this is genre that i very much enjoy when i am reading and watching and thinking so i have come to be very comfortable in way of ‘whoa bud that was scary days ahead’ but it was not what i was CREATING. But dang thing is ROMANCE and also jokeman way of COMEDY is a lot like way of HORROR because these are genres of tension and release and timing so if you understand these things you can understand them across all kinds of stories i think. FOR WAY OF why now on this timeline? Mostly just because i had story idea for STRAIGHT for a very long time just trottin around in my head knockin things over like a hogs birthday and i could not get rid of it. So finally i just said OKAY I WILL WRITE and that is how it happened but now i think i am going to have way of HORROR NOVEL or NOVELLE in addition to my other writing i think i can prove love is real in both ways and that is very exciting.


GNoH: Did the timing have anything to do with the wider political situation in the US? I know Trump was traumatic for the LGBTQIA+ community, especially with his assaults on Trans rights and inclusivity. Was the decision to have the story happening on the 3rd anniversary of Saturation Day in part a comment about complacency within the movement, now the immediate threat appears to have receded?


DCT: well when i had idea i was not sure if i could write the story in a way that PROVED LOVE IS REAL and that is always top goal i knew idea was good but when you start putting it on paper my worry was can i make my goal happen? Goal was WRITE STORY THAT IS EXCITING ROLLER COAST BUT MAKES QUEER BUCKAROOS FEEL GOOD AND CATHARTIC BY THE END and i was very concerned to think that this idea could end up just being LGBTQIA people being harmed during saturation day if it is framed wrong. So when i came up with way of STORY BEATS i though ‘we do not need to see the chaos of the first day where most of this violence happened’ because when you put that in the dang rearview mirror you now have a powerful metaphor for these real traumas of the past on this timeline without having to witness them. you can just feel them hanging over everything without making experience of reading the book just UGLY AND TRAMATIC and i really did not want it to make buds feel like that. But what is very good way is this opens up characters to react to past as metaphors for important issues in queer community like AIDS and other things that have been part of the journey of this timeline. So i liked third year because of this reason but also because you could believe that buds would go out into the desert by then. There is sense of both I WILL NOT LIVE IN FEAR ANYMORE and also sense of MAYBE THIS IS OVER? Which are important ideas to let drift around in your story i think


GNoH: I feel like the character of Jason is really important in this respect; I know on Twitter that you said part of what inspired him and his way was a reflection of gay men who lived through the AIDS crisis of the 80’s, and the indifference/hostility of the authorities of the day. With a horror tale, how do you balance the needs to present an unflinching portrayal of the events with your desire to provide hope? And do you feel like these are themes you’re likely to return to - can we expect more spinetinglers from Dr Tingle?


DCT: part of making story with HORRIFIC WAYS end up as story about hope is to write with understanding the LOVE IS REAL and to use this as motivation. As man name of chuck im talkin on proving love all the time in your artistic trots and sometimes i think buckaroos hear this and think ‘dang i can only make art that is handsome sunshine and rainbow?’ and that is NOT CORRECT of this way. All kinds of horror art or art that is difficult can prove love is this is driving force behind its creation just gotta be true to your way when you are putting these building blocks in place. In STRAIGHT i took extra time with this trot and made sure there was CATHARTIC MOMENT AT TURN OF STORY so that buds who read and have come to know these characters can cheer along with them in hopeful way. To answer next question HECK YES i will be writing other HORROR NOVELLA OR NOVEL VERY SOON probalby next big project i have just been rolling idea around in head for a while and i thought dang that is another good horror story so i am excited to explore this new idea more i think it will be very good and prove love in its own way


GNoH: Straight feels to have its roots firmly in a classic pulp horror tradition, with echoes of The Crazies, Day Of The Triffids, and All Fool’s Day. Are you a fan of pulp horror? Are there any particular stories or authors of that genre you especially enjoy?


DCT: oh dang VERY MUCH YES i will say good catch in mention of THE CRAZIES i enjoy this film very much not just original but even remake which is RARE CASE of probably better than original. In zombie subgerne there are all kinds of ways to show this MOB MENTALITY METAPHORE and i think zombies in straight are probably most similar to THE CRAZIES or way of I HAVE SLEPT FOR 28 DAYS NOW THIS IS MY WAY starring handsome cillian. But i think way of PULP or sometimes what is said of B-HORROR that i enjoy is taking methods of TELLIN A TALE that is considered to be low brow way and saying ‘hold on scoundrel there are no brows here’ and using this a way to deliver thoughtful story i do not know why i enjoy this so much but it is a dang hobby of mine i suppose


GNoH: I feel like there’s a class dimension to horror too (especially pulp horror) in that, like erotica and romance genres, it’s often looked down upon by the literary establishment. Do you agree with that? And given pulp horror’s (sometimes deserved, sometimes not) reputation for stereotypes and poor gender politics, do you see Straight in part as an act of reclamation?


DCT: oh yes but i am NO DANG STRANGER to being looked down on for method of presenting art that has been man name of chucks trot for a long time and comes with EROTICA WAY you are right about that. I have thought and talked on this some lately I think these genres are looked down on because they invoke INVOLENTARY REACTIONS you have arousal with EROTICA or laughter with jokerman COMEDY or a scream or a gasp with HORROR so i think these ways are seen as part of instinctual brain instead of DEEPER HIGHER THOUGHTS. But for me i very much enjoy genres that touch these involuntary reactions because there is so much primal truth there for timelines past. So i would call this VISCERAL SINCERITY and i enjoy thinking on this way. But for second part of question as far as reclaiming stereotypes with STRAIGHT i think this is true in some ways but not as direct i would say personally was trying to reclaim certain TROPES and subvert them. those had to do more with STORY STRUCTURE and other ways.


GNoH: Reading that, it strikes me… isn’t that a false dichotomy in any case? Between emotion/feeling and intellect? Aren’t the two irreducibly intertwined? Emotional intelligence is just as vital as any other way… and surely the two are interrelated, in ways voluntary and involuntary?


DCT: i would say it depends on definition of then buckaroo talkin on it if it is even way of DICHOTOMY at all so you are correct in many ways. It is probably middle gound at the end of the day as most trots on this timeline on BUT I WILL SAY yes they are interrelated. as buckaroos we are not cornered off into segments and broken down into pieces and probably MOST EFFECTIVE artists are going to be able to understand the way these pieces work together instead of try to rank them and put them at odds. We have many types of thoughts dancin around bumping into eachother in our brains and dismissing some type of them just limitin your dang color pallette in BIG PAINTING


GNoH: One of the brilliant aspects of Straight, for me, was the uneasy ambiguity around the effects of The Blank Space on the straight population; how much they remember, and if they have any control at all over their rages (and, of course the added layer of anti-vaxxers, which I appreciated given recent real-world events). Can you talk a bit about the decision making process that led to that?


DCT: yes GOOD CATCH BUD GLAD YOU ENJOYED i think this is important part of story and what was exciting to worlds greatest author chuck tingle because there are all kinds of MORAL TROTS you can pick apart in this way. Most zombie tales avoid this by saying ONCE YOU ARE BIT YOU ARE DONE FOR BUCKAROO we all know this classic scene of someone bit and then their bud has to shoot them thats every day time, so to subvert this i though ‘well what if they come back what if this is annual how do you deal with them now?’ there are a lot of EXCITING ETHICAL QUESTIONS of what is okay to do there and who is responsible that i wanted to talk on and work into greater metaphor of ‘how much is LGBTQIA community responsible for the mess of others?’ or really question of ‘how much is ANY MARGINALIZED COMMUNITY responsible for cleaning up after majority community as we push forward on this timeline proving love together?’ i do not think there is easy answer to this especially when you think of ways of ‘who is taking responsibility for not being cautious?’ and that of course ties into vaccines way. So i think there are many LAYERS OF METAPHORE that can prove love in different ways depending on what you want to trot away with.


GNoH: In addition to the question of who is taking caution and how, there’s also the thorny issue of the rights of a marginalised community with regard to self defence, which, again, your decision to have the frenzy only last for a limited time period complicates more than a standard zombie narrative. It seems to me that American culture has a fascination (if not, sometimes, a pathology) regarding the right to violence in self defense, but inevitably only really for the dominant population. Was the ‘Gay Malitia’ intended, in part, to address this? And do you feel like this is a theme you’re likely to return to?


DCT: part of having GAY MALITIA was just locgically planning out what this dang timeline would be like which is most fun part of story idea like this. Just thought it was interesting subversion of talk there has always been on LGBTQIA buckaroos in the military seems like every generation there is new issue with this and it is always about exclusion, so i thought whoa dang that is interesting in this would for a certain task dealing with SATURATION DAY it would be safest to ONLY have lgbtqia buckaroos working because for sure they will not change any everyone else is a risk. Even if they have vaccine who knows you could be arming a whole group of bad news buds CANT HAVE THAT. so this way of exploration just feel together naturally and i found it very interesting. As far as violence and self defense yes this is very complicated issue and you are right it is often put through lens of majority population such as when nra supported gun control ONLY ONCE because it was when black panthers in california wanted guns this happened on this timeline in 1967. So you can start to see some of these self defense issues REGARDLESS of where a buckaroo falls morally they are still fighting against a majority side who is going to bend the rules however they heckin want

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GNoH: As a straight white cis het man with LGBTQIA+ family members, I found the narrator's commentary around ‘allies’ challenging (though not, just to be clear, remotely invalid). Was part of your intention to challenge your straight audience in this regard? Or is it simply that the novella wasn’t, primarily, written for them (me)?


DCT: VERY GOOD AND BRAVE QUESTION thank you for asking this it is good catch and important thought. I would say whole dang story is about ALLIES but also about FALSE ALLIES so even though these are tough questions it is point of this tale to be BRAVE about zombies but also BRAVE about picking these thoughts apart. I think for buckaroos in LGBTQIA community what i wanted to give was a CATHARTIC WAY that lets you be frightened yes but also cheer along and say ‘dang i am so glad to hear someone saying this i have thought this but it is rare to see on the dang page’ and for straight buckaroos i hope they say 1) yes i just enjoy this as a story of fear like a dang rollercoaster but also 2) wow i have not really thought about being an ally in this way could i do a better job? Or to think ‘wow i can see how that would be scary for my LGBTQIA buds because they are in this battle all the dang time and i am there when i choose to be.’ and i think hopefully  anyone can read STRAIGHT and think ‘i will make effort to choose to be there in times that are easy but also times that are difficult and THAT is was being ally means’.


GNoH: Well, I appreciate that message, and the challenge to do and be better. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk to us, Dr. Tingle, and I look forward to more Horror stories from you, should the muse take you this way again :)


DCT: dang THANK YOU this was such a fun talk and thank you for proving love is real YOU HAVE CREATED SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL by askin these questions of chuck and other buds and then putting these answers out onto our timeline this process is creating a lot of joy for others and also for man name of chuck. So very sincere way to say thank you for trotting in this way and putting joy out there it is difficult sometimes to REMEMBER that even these small actions that seem like ‘oh we are just going about our trot’ can effect others and that we are all fighting to push this timeline towards a better place. And YOU ARE DOING THIS SO WELL thanks buckaroo it has been real dang treat to talk on this way LOVE IS REAL

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a father of one with a day job at a milk plant in British Columbia. In addition to our son, my girlfriend and I have two cats, a dog, and a horse. I’m shopping around my debut novel, Pushing Daisy, while writing the first draft of a post-apocalyptic novel, Echoes.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

Roger Darling, the protagonist of Pushing Daisy would be a challenge. He’s a grumpy dude. Justifiably—to him—but really not fun to be around. Why I would write a novel about him is beyond me.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?


The classics are classics for a reason! Steinbeck, Hemingway, Bradbury. They all shaped me and my writing. I dip into sci-fi as well as fantasy, but usually reluctantly. The reluctance isn’t warranted, though; I usually end up loving what I find in those genres.


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?

Horror is going through a renaissance! The literary elements that are being brought to the genre—Stephen Graham Jones, Paul Tremblay, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, all come to mind—are bringing the high-stakes horror is known for while using prose in a very unique and well-regarded way. The use of horror in the #OwnVoices community is also doing a lot to show different perspectives and bring in underrepresented demographics.

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?


We’ve been dealing with a lot of bleak circumstances, so I think we might want to start seeing some stories about hope and coming together. Either that, or some cathartic, Nazi-defeating tales of heroism. No matter which way horror goes, I think we’re going to want to avoid stories of devastating pandemics.

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

We want to feel the fear and exhilaration that comes with the gruesome while being reassured of our own safety! Stories are supposed to put characters through the ringer. What better ringer is Freddy Kreuger or Pennywise the Clown?

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?


I don’t think anything is missing from the genre. There’s so many great stories coming out from new and established writers that there’s something for everyone.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?


I have two friends that I’m honored to be published with in Howls From Hell—Alex Wolfgang and Shane Hawk—that have some great short story collections out. Shane’s coming out with a splatter western soon and Alex is working on a novel as well, so I can’t wait to see what they do with the longer form.


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

I had a relatively prominent horror reviewer subtweet about my story “Possess and Serve” in Howls From Hell. They claimed it was too long and they didn’t finish. I don’t blame them—it’s technically a novelette—but it sticks with me as my first negative review!

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

Finding the time, for sure. My son is just over a year and a half, and when I’m not at work, I’m spending time with him while his mom works with horses. My main writing time is on my coffee/lunch breaks. Even now, I’m typing on a tablet while sitting in my car!

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

I’m trying to straddle the line between diversity and not stealing the stories from other communities. It’s been a challenge to write from other points of view as I’m exposed to different attitudes and opinions. I would never write about race or gender issues as the focus of a novel because no matter how much research I do, that would be telling a story that someone from that demographic would do better with.


Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Constantly giving and receiving feedback from a consistent writing group has taught me so much about pacing and really slowing things down to create a mood and make everything in a scene clear. I’ve also been doing a lot to cut extraneous content which is emotionally taxing at times, but definitely necessary.

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

Give as much feedback as you can. It’s a lot easier to notice plot/character/setting issues in someone else’s story than your own. Noticing these problems in the writing of others helps you look at your own writing through the same critical lens.


Which of your characters is your favourite?

I really like the character of Luisa in my new story “Jaws” that’s coming out later this year in The Dread Machine’s debut anthology. Every story takes place in the year 1986. Since I wasn’t yet born, I interviewed my mom and based the story off her life—with the addition of dangerous teddy bears!

Which of your books best represents you?

I like to think Pushing Daisy really represents me. All of my negative thoughts and feelings, my anxieties and selfishness, I put into my protagonist. Every feeling that I’m ashamed to feel.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?


My new novel features an apocalyptic event where younger versions of every adult appear in the midst of their defining childhood trauma; a touch from your youthful apparition is fatal. Henry, a blind teenager, philosophizes about the world that remains:


“The kind of people that are left. Any good Samaritan would help a kid, right? So, who does that leave?” His head bobbed left and right. “Cowards. Assholes.”


That line defines the conflict in the story pretty succinctly.


Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?


Echoes is what I’m working on now, and Pushing Daisy was my last completed novel—the story of a vengeful ghost who haunts her selfish husband after her death.
If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?
Making jokes at moments of tension! It’s super hard to make a book scary if your protagonist is making little quips when there should be heightened stakes.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?


The last book that really blew my mind was The Suicide Motor Club by Christopher Buehlman. His characters are incredible, and his stories are thrilling. I can’t wait to get through more of his books!


The last book that disappointed me was Ghost Story by Peter Straub. It’s so beloved by many, but just wasn’t my bag.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?


“Does empathizing with a bad person make you in some way a bad person?”


To that, I would say that it’s important to see villains as human. When you separate them from us, you miss the important lesson that villainy is within anyone. The real proving of character comes from the way you avoid resorting to the behavior that would make you a bad person. Empathy rarely leads you to bad behavior.

WEBSITE LINKS
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Coauthor.ca
Twitter.com/burgleinfernal

Spacefaring researchers disturb an ancient horror. An enchanted object curses a grieving widow. A haunted reel torments a film student. A murder trial hinges on a chilling testimony.

In Howls From Hell, sixteen emerging horror writers pave the way for the future of the genre. Fans of dark and macabre fiction will savor this exhibition of all-original tales born from one of the fastest-growing horror communities in the world: HOWL Society.

With a foreword by GRADY HENDRIX, this anthology unveils the horror writers of tomorrow with spine-tingling stories from:

Following the recent release of Under A Ravens Wing to great critical acclaim, Stephen Volk has taken time out of his busy schedule to discuss the book with Ginger Nuts of Horror’s own Kit Power. In this spoiler-filled second part, they discuss the merging of the fictional with the historical, Doyle, Poe and racism, and much, much more. Enjoy!

Ginger Nuts Of Horror: So there’s a lot to cover, spoiler wise, but first HOLY HELL, C. AUGUSTE DUPIN is POE!!!! I cannot tell you what a shock to the system it was when I realized what was going on; audacious doesn’t even begin to cover it. You’ve obviously written fictional narratives around historical figures before—notably Peter Cushing, Alfred Hitchcock, Dennis Wheatley and Aleister Crowley in The Dark Masters Trilogy—what differences in approach, if any, did you have to take when you had one character who is ‘real’, and one entirely fictional?

Stephen Volk: Perhaps it was stupidity on my part, but I don’t know that I thought about the difference, to be honest! Sherlock Holmes was (and is) a very vivid and clear character in my mind, to the extent he feels as “real” as many a documented historical personage of his era, and I had a pretty vivid and clear idea of Edgar Allan Poe as a person, too, having read about him all my life (even writing a screenplay about him many years ago). So it didn’t seem crazy to put them together—Poe being the literary “father of the detective story” and Holmes being its grand master, it felt inevitable: in fact, I was shocked that nobody (to my knowledge) had done it before! There was The Seven Per Cent Solution, which teamed up Holmes and Sigmund Freud, and in the 1979 film Murder by Decree, Sherlock had set out to solve the real-life Jack the Ripper crimes, so there were a number of precedents of melding fact and fiction.

In a way, there is a point where a public figure such as a famous author becomes, ostensibly, a “character” in the form that we understand them, or think we understand them: and, concomitantly, there is a point where a fictional character becomes “real” or “as-if-real” when it comes to fandom. Sherlock Holmes was the first character, I believe, who had fans in the modern sense: those members of the public who were outraged when his creator had the temerity to kill him off! And of course, there were people who wrote to “Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street”. On the other side of the coin, we have the fictitious picture of Poe—maudlin, tormented, addicted, the absolute proto-goth or emo—and the actual facts: how can we ever unravel them into any objective idea of “truth”? I don’t think we can. So I unapologetically treat him as a fictional Poe. “My” Poe.

GNoH: Obviously you researched Poe extensively; when you came to write these stories, did either he or Holmes surprise you at any point? To what degree do you find you discover characters in the act of writing, and to what degree is that covered in the research/planning stage?

SV: I had to mentally chart, albeit roughly, how much (or little) my Holmes could wear his heart on his sleeve—given he hasn’t become the Doyle Holmes yet. I think it’s a bit like painting. You block in the rough areas of colour, the broad strokes, then the more you work on it, the more detail you add. The overall composition might remain the same—then again, you might stand back and think: “That shape really needs to change to make the overall pattern work.” As a for instance, when I wrote the first story, The Comfort of the Seine—and more or less throughout—Poe (“Dupin”) is committed to the cause of logic and reason. (I say in the first story he has rejected working on fiction as not worthy of his intellect!) But as I worked on the stories I slowly realised I was playing with literary tropes throughout. So I was skirting around the fact that the stories were all about the nature of stories themselves. I wondered where this was all taking me, and I didn’t know until I reached the final tale, The Mercy of the Night, which happens towards the end of Poe’s life. And a gap opened up in that story which was plot-driven, which was “Why does the murderess, Josephine Rappaport, want these books?” And the idea occurred to me about the humanizing influence of literature. And then I had a kind of death bed conversion for Poe—his realisation that, in spite of his dedication to cold ratiocination, what matters is literature because art conveys all we are as human beings in all our contradictions and abstractions (including love and friendship). So, finally, it gave me a start point and end point about the character. That’s a laborious example, but perhaps it helps convey what I mean.

There were also surprises along the way. I didn’t plan for Holmes to be given the gift of a violin in The Purloined Face, and in The Lunacy of Celestine Blot I didn’t know that his brother Mycroft had spent time in a madhouse until I wrote it! It was necessary, obviously, to prefigure that Holmes was not exactly a ladies’ man, but the idea that Poe prevents him from emotional engagement for his own psychological reasons didn’t occur to me until I wrote The Language of Terror. I suppose the cumulative effect of the stories was to demand me to answer certain questions like that, and that was part of the enjoyment of it. It’s a strange business to be excited about discoveries about characters that never actually existed and are just words on the page!   

GNoH The Purloined Face claims to tell the true events behind Leroux’s Phantom Of The Opera. Did you revisit the original text as part of the planning for this story? And what attracted you to the notion of adding Holmes and Poe to that tale?

SV: Shamefully, I didn’t, and I haven’t read the Leroux novel to this day! I was really using my memory and the primary cultural images of The Phantom, largely Lon Chaney and Hammer’s Herbert Lom versions. It was really that the Paris setting and the opera house setting cried out for me to do it. I knew that opera has a liking for women dying of consumption, so that brought it alive, given that Poe’s wife had died of that disease; though, as I think he says at one point in my story: “She never sang about it”. I liked that my Poe, who is as sarcastic as he is brilliant, could have fun with the situation, and I could too. By plunging him and Sherlock into a horror classic—re-tell it, but not a straight reboot. Twist it and subvert it, I hope. It’s not a bloke in a mask, for a start. I’m a sucker for stories that go “You know that story you think you know? It wasn’t like that at all.”

GNoH Can you talk a bit about how you constructed the mystery for this story? I realise that I don’t have the first clue how one would even go about writing such a tale - do you start with the resolution and work backwards?

SV: I honestly can’t remember, but that is usually the case. Know the ending first, and make your detective incredibly clever in how they get there. Which is (he says in hushed tones) terribly easy. (As Poe says about detective fiction in one of the stories!) I don’t have my earliest notes on this one, but I think I needed an unmasking scene (per Phantom), but wanted a different spin or reveal on that, so—(spoiler alert!)—I made it a child that you’re made to think is a maniacal dwarf. Which is, frankly, my revenge on the film Don’t Look Now for doing terrible things to my brain when I first saw it on a wet Wednesday in Coventry. My climax is really Don’t Look Now where you are expecting a dwarf. I think the idea of the acid attack victim came quite early, too. You always want a vivid character appealing for the help of your detective hero, and I liked (liked?) the idea of an actress whose looks are destroyed as an act of vengeance. That was the thrust of what I wanted to play with, so I would put down the beats of the scenes in, say, a page and a half—client arrives, visit to the opera house, and so on, planting red herrings, et cetera—then I’d flesh out that outline with more ideas (like beginning with the elderly Holmes going to see the Lon Chaney Phantom of the Opera in a cinema; which chronologically just about works) until it feels ready to write. Coming from a screenwriting background, I like to plan. I have to, really, especially with these kinds of stories. I don’t like flying blind and trying to find the runway.

GNoH: In a collection not short on macabre horror, The Three Hunchbacks stood out for me as a masterclass in both claustrophobia and body horror; for me, it felt in some ways to be a mirror-darkly version of The Man With The Twisted Lip, though the Poe influences are also sizable. Can you recall the inspiration for this one at all?

SV: It was quite funny, the way it came about, in typical circuitous fashion! Paul Kane had edited the previous story in the series for an anthology about Dupin, Beyond Rue Morgue, and joked that I should write one about The Hunchback of Notre Dame, as that was set in Paris! I presumed it was a joke, because my stories are set in the 1870s, and Notre Dame was set in medieval times, so I completely ruled it out as impossible. Then, many months later, I read a story in Fortean Times about another novel by Victor Hugo about brigands who deliberately deform people: it was the basis of the Conrad Veidt film The Man Who Laughs (which in turn inspired the look of Batman’s Joker). The article mentioned the idea that children were sometimes stolen and crippled to make them into beggars, so I took that as the catalyst for my tale. Of course, it’s delicious that the hunchback is an echo back to Poe’s “Hop-Frog” too. And why three of them? Because it is more bizarre than one! And because “The Three Hunchbacks” is a perverse nod to “The Six Napoleons” title in Doyle’s canon.

GNoH: Though Doyle was, in his personal life, relatively liberal for a white man of his place, time, and class, the Holmes canon does occasionally contain shocking racism (Tonga in The Sign Of Four, for example), frequent reliance on junk science (such as skull size to denote intelligence, and graphology), as well as clearly well meaning yet still problematic tales like The Yellow Face. Similarly, Poes’ work unquestionably leans into racial stereotypes that were prevalent in his era. You take some of this head-on in The Language of Terror; I’m fascinated by what your decision making process was with regard to this; can you talk about that?

SV: This is a very important question and I am very glad you asked it. I must admit I circumvented it in the case of Holmes. I might justify that decision in saying that those Doyle stories hadn’t happened yet chronologically, but that, of course, is rather flip. In the case of Poe, I didn’t feel the issue could be quite so easily navigated around. Yes, in stories such as The Gold Bug Poe’s writing of Jupiter and his comic patois is horribly offensive to read today, and I’m well aware it can be construed as excusing Poe to say he was a man of his time and upbringing: though I equally think it’s silly to argue that he wasn’t. We are all products of our time, and I am quite confident we will be seen as deplorable to future generations in ways we cannot foresee. Again, that is not to excuse him or his writing for aspects that are problematic in the least.

So, to cut to the chase—was Edgar Allan Poe racist? That is for the individual to decide and I can’t decide for you. Toni Morrison said, “No early American writer is more important to the concept of American Africanism than Poe”—yet many critics have acknowledged the slippery way in which he deploys genre not only in the examination of race but also of gender and class. G. R. Thompson says “Almost everything in Poe is qualified by or controlled by a prevailing duplicity or irony”.

In researching a completely different story (not in this book) I was intrigued to read that Leland Person and Lesley Ginsberg interpret The Black Cat solely as the re-enactment of the Nat Turner rebellion of 1831, while to Hannah Walker it “depicts the injustices of slavery and ultimately shows how slavery damns the South”. It is hard after reading her analysis not to see the image of the hanged black cat as that of a lynched slave. Joan Dayan makes a similar compelling argument that the story is about the mutually destructive effects of slavery on both slave and master. It was Poe’s political intent and personal attitudes, she says, that anchor the story. In this context (according to Walker) the narrator’s wife has a pivotal role, representing Northern abolitionists in their fight to abolish slavery. It is she who takes a “solid stand” against the violent narrator/slaveholder, making Poe’s tale a racial allegory and “an omen of the damning effects to come if the South continued to unleash aggression towards slaves and Northern abolitionists”.

I find this fascinating, and certainly implies that the argument about Edgar need not be binary.

To be absolutely honest, I did not want to write a story, let alone a book, in which one of the heroes is a racist. I would find it objectionable and impossible. To that extent, I avoided the issue until I had to address it—that is, when I came up with a story that involved the assassination of Lincoln and the possibly still-alive John Wilkes Booth: The Language of Terror. It felt incumbent on me--here—to say something of Poe in relation to race. But it is, of necessity, a commentary on my fictional Poe, not the real Edgar (whose views are unknowable). So in the story, my fictional Poe sees the destructive force of the racial divide, and the obvious fact that what holds all races together is that we are all human. (“Dupin” again expressing a modern idea “out of his time.” Quite deliberately on my part.)

I wanted to emphasise this by showing yet another “twin” figure in the black Congressman Vance, born on the same day as Poe. (You probably noticed, there are several doppelgangers in the book!) The tide of history is changing. Lady Liberty is being physically exported to the USA, and Le Bon, who has been Poe’s loyal black assistant throughout, is given by Poe on his deathbed a more fitting and optimistic future in America, where greater opportunities can be realised than in Europe (the past). It’s perhaps sentimental, but I think Eddy deserved to express a little sentiment in his final hours.

That, I have to say, is how I chose to depict my fictional Poe in these particular stories—detective stories, which have a certain need and structure, which would have been unbalanced by too much political and social chin stroking. If somebody wishes to write a story or novel that depicts Poe in a way they think more truthful, they are quite entitled to do so. I’d be quite excited to read it!   

GNoH: There was a similar, if smaller moment, I thought, in Father Of The Man, where the Pinkerton Detective character is keen to distance himself from some of the crimes of that organisation…

SV:  Oh, that was just misdirection on my part. Giving the dogged Pinkerton a moral conscience, simply so that the reader would think he was a stand-up guy with integrity. As it turns out, of course, he is the complete reverse of that. A liar and criminal with no moral integrity at all.    

GNoH: I want to get into the final story, The Mercy Of The Night, where Poe is finally given a voice of his own. Why did you want to do this, a rather risky move, rather than maintain the device of Sherlock as narrator?

SV: Partly I thought the change of tone would be refreshing. Partly I loved the idea that Poe has to solve his own murder. And partly because Holmes can’t tell this one, because he is the antagonist. He is the one whose intended crime has to be uncovered: in that respect it was a practical decision.

But that practical decision yielded certain benefits and opened certain doors. If you are made to bend a certain way, creative opportunities present themselves. Poe being bedridden is interesting: he can’t get out so Holmes has become his footslogger. That’s a twist on the situation I have set up, and a poignant one, I hope. Also Poe being unable to speak, when he is so verbally dextrous in previous stories lends the tale an air of melancholy and loss. I also wanted Poe to be the storyteller because I thought by now the reader has earned the right of a view inside the great man’s head—you get to peek into his bedroom and are privy to his dreams, as well as his more private and crippling fears. It is the story that is most about Poe. Ironically, it is about his decline into an old age which, in reality, he never suffered. I granted that. Or inflicted it on him, I’m not sure which.

Most of all it was a more interesting way of passing on the baton to the man who will become the greatest detective the world has ever known: Sherlock Holmes. To tell it from Sherlock’s viewpoint it would have been: “Oh dear. My mentor is dead. Off to London. Aren’t I the bee’s knees!” Which doesn’t really advance what you know already. By telling it from Poe’s point of view there is the tragedy of death but also, I hope, the sense of continuity and transformation of what Poe leaves behind. In a sense, it is about the hope we all have for leaving behind what we have created, or the effect we might have had on those we leave behind. That’s what I was striving for, in any case. A conclusion not about two detectives, but about two human beings.

GNoH: Your website lists you as a patron of Humanists UK, and I felt this tale was in some ways a very strong expression of Humanist values, when it comes to matters of end-of-life care, as well as asking some fundamental, difficult questions about the nature of suffering, and our moral imperatives in the face of such suffering. To what degree were such concerns weighing on you, as you wrote and revised this tale? Did the change in authorial ‘voice’ help with this different focus?

SV: I wasn’t conscious of it reflecting any Humanist views. It was more “arse-about-face” than that. Without it sounding schematic, I wanted the climactic story to be the death of Poe, and it struck me as exciting—or at least fitting—that Holmes should be Poe’s murderer. But murder him out of love, not the usual base or greedy motive for murder. A mercy killing, if you will (hence the title). And thus, having committed the ultimate crime, he can become the great detective we all know and love.

So I then struggled to form a picture of what Poe was like in his last days. Would he be mentally frail, suffering from dementia—my mother died of that, and I could certainly write that with some authenticity—but I thought, no, that’s not right for the story. How much more of a nightmare it would be if his body lets him down, his physical suffering has become unbearable, but his wonderful brain is hideously intact. That would be something that his carer would surely be horrified by, and drawn to do something about. Deciding upon that, it enabled me nevertheless to explore ideas of mortality and, importantly for me, a sense of what we leave behind when we go. Not in the metaphysical sense, but in the realm of memory, and what is carried on in the hearts of those who have been affected by us and touched by us as human beings. I suppose, returning to the Humanism point, I had the benefit of Poe not being a religious person (in my version he is the supreme logician), so I didn’t want a spiritual conversion. That would have felt terrible; a kind of betrayal. But I think I nod a wee bit towards the spiritual of sorts in Poe’s musing that, in death, he wouldn’t mind being reunited with Virginia in a dream. And you’re kind of not sure whether he is being sarcastic at that point or letting the door open a crack to the possibility of an afterlife. He doesn’t know for sure, as none of us know for sure. But he’s pretty certain, as I’m pretty certain! His thought is sort of like: “I don’t believe that stuff. It would be comforting if I did.”

But I can’t say my experience of watching my mother’s decline into ill health, into that dreadful limbo of non-existence in terms of identity, really, didn’t have an impact on me writing this story. It’s possibly at the core of it, in some way. The number of times we drove away from visiting her in the nursing home and my wife would say: “Will you promise me that you won’t let me go like that? I’d rather die.” And you have these conversations and feelings and dark thoughts at the inescapable situation, the sense of losing a loved one down a slippery slope and there is nothing you can do about it, and often you don’t know that a story is the outlet for those feelings until someone asks.     

GNoH: Finally, what’s next for Stephen Volk, screenwriter and author? What projects can we look forward to from you for the rest of 2021 and beyond?

SV: Well, 2020 was a very peculiar year. As I say, my mother died in April of Covid-related pneumonia. We were unable to visit her before she died, and only my brother and I and our respective wives were allowed to the funeral. I then felt in limbo for many months: I’m sure a lot of people did. Also the film and TV industry was frozen by inactivity. Dead. So that is scary on a professional basis. Happily, now, we are starting to come out of it, and I have been more productive, and some new stuff I have on the cards is pretty exciting.

I have been writing a lot of short stories—short-form stuff seemed to come easier in 2020—and my next collection, called Lies of Tenderness, will be published by PS Publishing in March 2022. I’m really proud of the stories in that, more or less all recent ones, including a couple of novellas that nobody has seen yet. So that’s great.

Also, I can’t give details but I’m developing a supernatural TV series with a production company that made one of the mega stand-out shows of recent times. It will be absolutely brilliant if that is picked up by a broadcaster. I’ve also written a low budget film that a brilliant Welsh director wants to make, and I am working on a new, insane screenplay on spec. It’s sort of like the film that Ken Russell should have made after Gothic. Yes, it is that batshit-crazy and out there! Sometimes you have to write the film you want to see in your head, and not wait for anybody’s permission.

Read Kit Power's review of Under A Ravens Wing here ​

Following the recent release of Under A Ravens Wing (to great critical acclaim), Stephen Volk has taken time out of his busy schedule to discuss the book with Ginger Nuts of Horror’s own Kit Power. In this first, spoiler-free part, they discuss taking on legendary fictional and historical figures, researching 1870’s Paris, and much, much more. Enjoy.

Ginger Nuts Of Horror: I think we’ve got to start with Sherlock, if that’s okay, because I have a lifelong obsession with the character; especially the Doyle short stories and Jeremy Brett’s screen personification of the character. What’s your own history with Holmes as a reader? And how did it feel to be taking on one of these fictional titans of British literature/storytelling?

Stephen Volk: Well, taking the second part of the question first, I think you are implying a certain amount of intimidation inherent in such a task! But, obviously, if I felt like that I wouldn’t do it! There are too many things in life to feel intimidated by, without adding to them by what you are writing! So, no, I’d have to do it without any nervousness beyond the usual nagging question of whether readers will give a hoot about the story, or characters. Which I guess is where the intimidation, if any, creeps in—will “my” Holmes be accepted or not? Well, the thing is, it is not canon, it is not the Holmes of the Doyle stories, it is my imagining of a Holmes before he becomes Holmes, and I’m as entitled to have ideas about that as anybody else. And in a way it’s not the Doyle universe. It’s a jigsaw or compendium of many influences, including Doyle and Holmes on the page and screen, as well as various other literary and cultural entities I grew up with—not least, of course, Poe.

My personal history with the great detective began with one of my formative memories: Listening to The Hound of the Baskervilles on a big wooden wireless with my cousin when we were children. Boy, it scared us witless! My uncle had to reassure us that the howls were made by a little bald man in glasses in a recording booth. Honestly! Then it was the Douglas Wilmer incarnation on BBC television. But when I was growing up, my father always talking about Basil Rathbone and I used to love watching the old black-and-white films when they popped up on TV. Old fashioned though they might be to modern eyes, you have to admit “Basil” absolutely nailed the character forever. Like the immaculate Peter Cushing (who donned the deerstalker after Wilmer for the BBC), Rathbone just completely convinced as Holmes and I always say the two of them were Holmes as opposed to acting him (as, forgive me, I consider both Jeremy Brett and Cumberbatch do—fine actors though they are). Around the same time—that is, the late ‘60s—we were experiencing Mr Spock on Star Trek and I think it’s no great revelation to say that we bookish, socially inept and even girl-phobic schoolboys identified with both, but were slightly saddened by the side of our nature reflected in them. It’s a theme that finds its way in Under a Raven’s Wing, I suppose. How cutting off from human passions can be a refuge, but also a prison. What we sacrifice by doing so is always the subtext, I think, of Holmes and Watson.

By the way, I didn’t know I was going to write this series of stories. They just evolved from my writing the first one, prodded into existence by that wonderful Canadian editor and fellow Sherlock freak, Charles Prepolec. But what came out of them, oozed out of them, really, was the thick gruel of those early enthusiasms, bunged in a pot and stirred up into a new, hopefully tasty concoction! I came back again and again because I absolutely loved the concept, the world, and the potential of this duo I’d set up. They took me back to a place in my head I wanted to be. In fact, once or twice on social media I think I said: “That’s it! I’m off back to the 1870s!”

GNoH: One thing I note from your reply, about ‘...cutting off from human passions can be a refuge, but also a prison…’ is that, in detective work, as in writing, there’s a paradox there; in that, without being able to understand and synthesize ‘human passions’ we’d be unable to do our work well - and yet the distance is also crucial. How do you strike that balance in your own life?

SV: Oh I don’t know how to analyse that in my own life, at all! That’s possibly why it is interesting to me in stories, because I can try and understand it in the abstract. Stories are always about the mystery of being human, aren’t they? I think in these stories in particular there is a thread about the “harm” of being too passionate, of letting yourself go without restraint, the idea of “falling in love” being the most universal example – because (my) Dupin believes that is the road to emotional pain (and he has good reason to think so). On some level being prepared to fall in love is to open yourself to the possibility of pain, but to deny it yourself is another kind of pain. If pushed, I might say the passionate side of our nature, without restraint, could be said to be Paris – the city of lovers – whereas London (particularly Victorian London) is more the repression and denial. That’s why I find Dupin and Holmes such lovely opposites. You always seek out opposites and clashes as a writer. The ends of a magnet. What brings people together and what pushes them apart.


GNoH: At what point did it become clear to you that you were writing a series of connected stories? And how did that knowledge impact the writing of the later tales?


SV: I think around the third one, which was written for editor Simon Clark, I wondered, “Hello, if I do, say, six of these, it could be a book!” But it was only after one or two more that I started to think, hey, if this is a book, I want these characters to go somewhere, I want the book as a whole to amount to something. To become more than a linked collection, more of a “composite novel”, if you will. And that meant digging into what these two characters meant to each other and what was the “ending” that made sense of the series – that set up the eventual moving on of Holmes as the Holmes we know when we meet him in London. Or rather, when Watson meets him. And that was the most gratifying part of the whole process. Deciding where I wanted this to go – or rather, the stories telling me how this had to end.


GNoH: Did you ever find yourself missing Watson, as you wrote these stories, either narratively or in terms of his voice? The vast majority of the Holmes stories are told from his point of view, after all…

SV: Actually, no. It was liberating and I was grateful for that. But I’d already written a story from Watson’s point of view, called “Hounded”. Again, it wasn’t strictly canon, because Holmes is dead and Watson is suffering from grief at his loss. I enjoyed writing it, but doing a whole pile of Holmes/Watson stories didn’t interest me.

GNoH: Holmes is one half of the equation, but of course Poe, and Poe’s Dupin especially, is the other half. Given your Twitter avatar is a portrait of Poe, I feel safe assuming you’re a fan. What is the importance of Poe to you as a writer of genre fiction? What about his work endures, and deserves that endurance, do you think?

SV: Ha! Yes, I put the portrait of Poe on twitter when I’d written the first few tales. As well as reminding me every day of the high bar set by the original Master of Horror, of psychological crime, of detective fiction, of science fiction in many ways, and so much else; it was also a reminder to get on with the next one in the series!

To me, frankly, Poe is the Shakespeare of horror. Nobody comes close. In the small space available I couldn’t possibly do justice to the many ways in which Poe is important to literature and to genre fiction in particular. Any one of his stories could be dissected as an absolute fount of future storytelling and thinking, and the depth of their psychological insight has been widely and thoroughly documented. (I particularly like the Freudian analysis of Poe’s stories in relation to the phases of his life story, as documented by Marie Bonaparte.) But it is interesting. Rupert Everett recent made The Happy Prince, a truly superb film about the last days of Oscar Wilde, and I went to a screening, and somebody in the audience asked what drew the actor/director to Wilde’s work, and Everett said something astonishingly honest: he said it wasn’t so much Wilde’s work, which was not that remarkable (many writers were publishing similar work but have been forgotten), but to Wilde as a person. And this is part of what attracts me to Poe. His biography is so damned interesting. Not merely the successes, but the failures, the arrogance, the misbegotten attempts to start literary magazines, his hatred of John Allan, the death of his mother on stage, coughing up blood the way his child bride would do years later, the descent into drink and drugs, the high of “The Raven” and the low of the gutter. From his acerbic put downs and pompous reviews of other poets, I always sense Poe was one of those people you would love to see on a TV chat show: a mixture of the louche Robert Downey Jr, the witty Stephen Fry and the obnoxious Will Self. With a dash of Truman Capote thrown in. And dead at forty. My God!

If you were to force me to say what endures, and deserves to endure (as you in fact did), I would say the vivid symbolism at the core of his stories—sometimes a single chilling image. An ape wielding a straight razor. The walling up of a murdered wife. The terror of waking up in a coffin. The Red Death that no wall can be protection from. The punishment of the swinging pendulum—representing time, the ticking clock of a wasting disease, or the faceless judges representing guilt, possibly sexual guilt, and the descending blade of castration, or whatever you want it to be. These primal horror tropes have never been bettered because Poe dug deep into his psyche—perhaps by dint of certain substances, let’s be honest—but also because in most cases he approached stories with a certain perverse glee, definitely with an impish (sic) (and “sick”) sense of humour, but also, I’d say, a playful, deliberately shocking, and anarchic one. He showed his contemporaries, as he shows us still, that the gothic wasn’t born of landscape or ruins, but was the stuff of our minds, our secrets. And in terms of his detective stories, I think they were all about the absurdity of the rational. That life was not rational. An ape with a straight razor who stuffs a woman’s corpse up a chimney is not rational, it’s insane. Yet we persist in thinking we can catalogue and understand this madhouse. For Poe, that is the ultimate joke.


GNoH: We’ve discussed research before, but it strikes me that 1870’s Paris is a next level challenge, in that it exists entirely outside of living memory, very little photographic material… What was your research process for these stories? And how did that research impact on the stories?


SV: That decade wasn’t chosen other than the fact that I had to pre-date it from Holmes meeting Watson. Retro-fit the timeline, in effect. And, as I mentioned, I didn’t plan the stories all in one fell swoop: the series took about ten years to write, on and off. Plus, as detective mysteries, each one needed a heck of a lot of working out (by which I mean, mulling over stuff while I work on other things, jotting down ideas, snippets, filling a file with jottings, references, ten pages, twenty, forty pages... long before I plot them or start writing!). But the research I guess came on a subject-by-subject basis. The first concerns the Paris Morgue. (Snippet: let’s coincide it with the first Impressionist exhibition!) The second concerns the Paris Opera, so let’s dive into that. The third, Charcot’s famous hysteria patients. (Which does have a lot of photographic evidence, in point of fact—which happens to be fascinating.) It is no great pain to grub around in these areas. In fact, I’d say it’s possibly the most enjoyable part of writing historical crime or horror. You learn stuff you never knew, and find connections, and challenges—what would Poe’s C. Auguste Dupin say to one of the founding fathers of psychiatry, for example? Or to Jules Verne?—I didn’t know, but it was fun to find out.

Naturally, over time, I built up ideas about the era, the politics (the Franco-Prussian War, for instance—which Dupin, naturally, had a hand in), and other random things which I’ve been interested in over the years, such as so-called “spirit” photography. It all became rather rich and I loved the idea of my Paris being rather sleazy and rather decadent compared to the Victorian London which has come to be inseparable from Doyle’s Holmes.

GNoH: I’d like to revisit the subject of politics more fully in the spoiler part of our interview, but it strikes me that there’s a delicate balance to be struck between faithfully portraying the politics of the time (as abhorrent as some of that will be to modern sensibilities) and writing for a modern audience where, in some respects, we have a better and fuller understanding of some matters than even the finest minds of the times were able to muster (Charcot’s patients being an excellent case in point). How do you approach navigating those tensions when writing a period piece?


SV: Very good question. In a period setting, attitudes that are problematic are a tricky issue I was fully aware of throughout. To be honest, I try to tackle it instinctively when I get to that kind of knot in the wood. By which I mean, you don’t want to be wilfully untruthful of the past, which at worst is rewriting it, but on the other hand I have no interest in replicating old prejudices and outdated ideas in my fiction without authorial comment. The benefit I have is that “Dupin” is smarter than the age he lives in, so he can express a more enlightened view than those around him, therefore I can have my cake and eat it. He’s way ahead of Charcot’s ideas on madness, and “female” madness, for instance, and isn’t afraid to say so. Overall, I’d say, I can’t be anything but a modern author working in 2021, and my concerns are of today, not of back then. So I can use my stories and characters to comment on that era, if I want, while hopefully maintaining a sense of authenticity. That’s the balance, really.

GNoH: Did the research itself lead directly to any of the story ideas, or story elements? Had you always intended Verne to be a character in one of the stories, for example?

SV: I can’t recall what order it came in. I wanted to do one about hysteria and Charcot, because that fitted the timeline. I probably had a note elsewhere about Verne having penned a version of Poe’s Ice Sphinx (from The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym).  Mesmerism was probably another note to myself: having Dupin hypnotise the patient as a nod to The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar. So I’d tend to collect lots of fragmentary ideas and see how they fitted together. The moon-men seemed to link nicely with Poe’s moon hoax and I was intrigued, mainly, to write a kind of “UFO abductee” experience in Paris in the 1870s. But all the stories were sporadic – there was no “always intended” about them! You can tell this because of the liberal sprinkling of “cases yet to be told” – which are literally my scribbled notes for possible future stories! I wonder if Doyle ever know what the Giant Rat of Sumatra was? Anyway, he gave us plenty to play with.

GNoH: Can I take it from that reply that you’re still collecting notes? Do you still feel the pull of 1870’s Paris?

SV: I have taken my foot off the accelerator. In fact I have pulled the handbrake. For now. It feels as if I took it to completion, but I can’t completely rule out a story idea coming to me in the future. You never know. I’m in no hurry, though. There are many other fish to fry.


GNoH: And with that, Part 1 of our interview concludes. Join us shortly for part 2, where we will delve into spoiler territory, covering twists, the art and science of mystery, and much more.

UNDER A RAVEN’S WING​ BY STEPHEN VOLK ​​

A COLLECTION by Stephen Volk
CATEGORY Horror
PUBLICATION DATE  March 2021
COVER & INTERIOR ART Pedro Marques
INTRODUCTION Charles Prepolec
PAGES  327
EDITIONS 
Jacketed Hardcover — ISBN  978-1-786367-06-8  [£25]
JHC signed by Stephen Volk and limited to 100 numbered copies  — ISBN 978-1-786367-07-5  [£35]


SYNOPSIS
The Apprenticeship of Sherlock Holmes
In 1870s Paris, long before meeting his Dr Watson, the young man who will one day become the world’s greatest detective finds himself plunged into a mystery that will change his life forever.
​
A brilliant man—C. Auguste Dupin—steps from the shadows. Destined to become his mentor. Soon to introduce him to a world of ghastly crime and seemingly inexplicable horrors.

• The spectral tormentor that is being called, in hushed tones, The Phantom of the Opera . . .
• The sinister old man who visits corpses in the Paris morgue . . .
• An incarcerated lunatic who insists she is visited by creatures from the Moon . . .
• A hunchback discovered in the bell tower of Notre Dame . . .
• And—perhaps most shocking of all—the awful secret Dupin himself hides from the world.
  
  Purchase a copy here 

Mental Health has always been a subject that is close to my heart, as a suffer of extreme depression and anxiety, as well as number of other disorders, I have always wanted to use the Ginger Nuts of Horror Website as a force of good in promoting awareness of these issue.  When director Josh Armstrong contacted the site asking for help to promote his new film Apocryphal, a film which is  a tribute to those we have lost to drug addiction, and its purpose is to shed light on the importance of mental health, I jumped at the chance.  

Today we welcome Josh to the site with a powerful and in-depth interview about his films, mental health representation, and why Peppa Pig appears in his IMDB credits.  

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

My name is Steve Toase. I'm originally from North Yorkshire in England, but now live in Munich, Germany. I'm a trained archaeologist and spent several years working in commercial archaeology. As well as fiction I write for Fortean Times (I'm the regular comics and graphic novels reviewer). In my spare time I ride motorbikes and make cocktails at home (though not at the same time).

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

The nurse in Not All the Coal That Is Dug Warms the World. There's no supernatural horror, drooling beast of hell or unlimited power. Just the banality of evil that leads to genocide.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

Art. We first came to Munich because of my wife's love for Franz Marc's art and art has a huge influence on my fiction. I also grew up in the late seventies. The culture that now gets grouped together under Hauntology (Public Information Films, Chocky TV series, Bagpuss, Tales of the Unexpected etc) seeped into my worldview very early.

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?

Someone at Worldcon described horror as the only genre defined by an emotion, and for that reason can manifest in any setting. I think part of the role of writers is showing the vast range of places horror can occur, whether that's romance, family drama, crime, or comedy. I would argue that both Thomas Ligotti and Robert Shearman are masters of locating horror in comedy which makes it far more unnerving.  For me personally the writers who excel at horror are the ones who create an overwhelming sense of discomfort that intensifies until you feel like you can't escape it rather than a short lived jump scare.

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?

During a recent conversation with my writing group we were talking about the reaction in writing to the pandemic, and the relative invisibility of the Spanish Flu in the literature of the time.

I think that we will see it appear for example in ideas of isolation or anxiety about not being able to save people, but I think those will be embedded in other settings rather than say a glut of zombie or pandemic fiction.

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

Horror is the safety cabinet of genres. We can slide our hands into the gloves, watch the visceral reaction within, then step away and breathe in the fresh air. Horror lets us have the cathartic experience of being able to close the cover and know that these were just words.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

Bring more writers in. More voices. Fear is universal, but the way we experience it is unique. Having that explored in the horror genre only makes it more powerful.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice off?

I finally got around to reading Sing Your Sadness Deep by Laura Mauro and am really looking forward to seeing where Laura goes next. Kylie Whitehead has a new novel called Absorbed coming out from New Ruins which was very good. Premee Mohamed is writing some fantastic cosmic horror at the moment. Tracey Fahey and Penny Jones both have new books out. Also Chip Houser and G.V. Anderson are definitely new writers to watch.

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


Two from friends. One said that my story Not All the Coal That Is Dug Warms the World (a short story inspired by the punitive disability benefits system in England) made them feel physically sick… Someone else said that Green Grows the Grief brought them to tears, so I think both those were successful.

Des Lewis has been reviewing my collection To Drown in Dark Water Des's reviews are a work of art in their own right, and he often makes connections that I've not seen. I get to see how the stories relate to each other through someone else's eyes.

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

Names. Everyone starts off as Sarah and Simon (because there easy to run a find/replace on without messing up the rest of the manuscript when I finally come up with a name).

I also struggle with writing novel length stories. Most of my work is short fiction (I tend toward flash fiction and my sweet spot is between 250-750 words). When I come to work on something 40,000 to 80,000 words everything feels a bit baggy when I'm writing it. It's all a learning process.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

I don't think anything is completely off limits, but there are several subjects I won't write about, because I don't feel like they're mine to write. Of course all fiction comes from imagination but it's good to leave space for people to tell stories inspired by their own experiences.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

I think I have a better idea of how to build that intensity so that the reader feels the inevitability of the outcome in such a way that the reader carries on to the end.


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

Turn up. It's a cliché to say write everyday, because people have different pressures. They might be family, work, health, or all three. Write a paragraph or a sentence every day and the story will come.

I was a stay at home dad and still have a day job. The best way I've found to deal with the lack of writing opportunity was to spend the time when I'm doing other stuff thinking about the story so when I sit down I can crack straight on with the writing.

Which of your characters is your favourite?

Papa Yaga without a doubt. I mean I wouldn't want to spend too much time with him, but from a writing perspective he's a lot of fun. He has a moral centre, but it's nowhere near ours. In the first story he appeared in (The Jaws of Ouroboros) he's dealing a very rare drug, has his base in a converted dragline quarrying machine and is utterly ruthless. He also appears in another story in the collection, but I won't give too much away about that.

Which of your books best represents you?

As this is my first book, I'll go with best story, if that's OK. I think Streuobstwiese. The structure is episodic, based essentially around short flash fiction length sections. The story is about family relationships, it's got Fortean elements, and is also visceral.

Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?

From Ruby Red and Snowflake Cold

The sisters had no heart of their own. They asked the flowers for advice and the flowers took the sisters’ eyes in payment, enwrapping each in skin thin petals.

“To make a heart,” the flowers said, “consume the winter. Eat it like a banquet. Suspend days of snowfall in the air and let them drop against your tongue until your mouth is full of ice and pine needles.”

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

To Drown in Dark Water is my new collection from Undertow. There are twenty six stories. Three of them have previously been reprinted in Ellen Datlow's Best Horror of the Year series, and six are brand new to the collection.

The last book I finished writing was a novella. It draws on archaeology, German cities, lost postal systems and body horror. My next project has a slightly different tone to it. More like Tom Holt in feel. I'm also playing with ideas for my next Art Albion story. I think the next novel in that world will have a horror feel.

If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

The mad homeless victim. Having been homeless I think we should work toward portraying people experiencing homelessness as complex people rather than one dimensional fodder. As someone who has experienced homelessness as a teenager this is a subject very close to my heart.


What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?

I've read a lot of good fiction recently, but the one that's had a huge impact on me is The Other Side by Alfred Kubin. Kubin was mainly a printmaker and only wrote the one book. The Other Side was written in the wake of his father's death. Because it's a subject that features a lot in my work, how we deal with loss, I find it really interesting how he tackles his own grief through the portrayal of the city of Perle.


What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

I've got this old motorbike in the barn. No idea if it runs. Want to take it off my hands?
My answer would be yes :)

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m a writer from the North of England where the scenery and way of life bleeds heavily into my work. I’ve been writing seriously for 4/5 years. Before that I would only really call myself a dabbler, at best. Now I write every day. I’m dedicated and hungry to get better.

Which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life?

Probably the art gallery owner in my story ‘Collaboration’. Whilst I admire the guy’s drive to create, his methods are questionable in the extreme.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?

Crime books. Straight out of university I worked in a call centre and in the downtime between calls I read. I binged Ian Rankin’s Rebus books as well as books by David Peace and Val McDermid. I’d read a lot of horror as a kid, mainly supernatural stuff, but the crime books I read anchored horror in real life. That became formative for me.

Moving on a number of years, I binged David Peace’s Red Riding Quartet and it blew my mind. Not just the horrific content but the unflinching, spare prose. Those four books have left their mark on me for sure.

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’d never shy away from the term horror. Personally, I prefer the term dark fiction, but horror is fine.

I think within the genre, nobody really cares about using the word horror. When you mention it to a layman, they instantly assume you write about ghosts and vampires.

Genres are boxes that make it easier to categorize and sell media. But the lines that divide them aren’t as straight as the lines of a bookshelf. There’s horror in everything. Horror is an emotion at the end of the day, anything that makes you feel that repulsion, that fear, is horror, whether people want to accept that or not.

I’m not sure that as a genre, we need to break out or break past. In my own experience, those that like the darker fiction will find their own way here.

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?

Assuming (praying) that things return to some kind of normal following the pandemic, the two biggest issues to my mind are the climate crisis and the institutional and systematic racism and discrimination in our major nations.

These two things are the great horrors of the modern world. They’ve been ably attacked by the genre, be it through writers like Adam Nevill and Jeff VanderMeer tackling environmental horror or writers and directors like Jordan Peele taking on racism. That’s something I expect to see continue, but I think needs to continue to keep audiences thinking and evolving in their views.

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

For escapism really. People like to be shocked, like to be shaken from their own routines and worlds. Horror provides that. It allows us to dream and to fear with no consequences. Reading or watching horror is the ultimate escapism as we can simply turn it off or close the book if it gets too much. Unfortunately, that’s not something we can do to horrors that happen every day.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?

I’d say diverse voices. It seems to me that horror is leading the way in making writing and submitting stories accessible to those who have previously been marginalized and deliberately kept quiet. Whilst there’s a long way to go, the last couple of years in particular give me hope that everyone will one day be empowered and enabled to tell their own stories and be heard.

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of?

I’d say Kev Harrison is definitely one to watch. He’s been knocking it out the park with his work lately. His novella The Balance was really good and well received. I know there’s more in the tank from Kev.

Also, I have a friend, Grant Longstaff, who is not only a fantastic beta reader but a great writer. He’s appeared in a few anthologies so far and I’m really excited to see what he can bring to the table in the next few years.

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

Someone randomly tweeted me a few months back as part of a larger thread about stories that have disturbed them. She said that even months after listening to ‘Collaboration’ on The Other Stories podcast, the ending still made her shudder. That was a nice moment.

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

Tough one. It’s all difficult depending on the day. Lately though, I’ve started to find it easier to get first drafts done. Now I need to teach myself to edit harder. To really hammer that story into shape more and make it sing. That in itself, is a separate skill.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?

As long as topics are handled with care, I think there are valid points to be made about almost anything. But the care taken by the writer is key. That’s where the exploration of any topic lives or dies. If you don’t treat your subject matter with respect, the story is worthless.

Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

I’d like to think that I’ve started to find my own voice, particularly in the last few years. I’ve not only identified the topics I like to write about, but the way in which I approach prose has changed. I think some of my initial story attempts were a bit stuffy, written as though a teacher would grade them for grammar etc. When you write like that, you’re never true to yourself.

Now I feel as though I’ve discovered more about who I am and not only that, it translates onto the page a lot more too.

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

Writing advice is subjective so that’s quite tough. I’ll go for one specific thing and one general.

I’ve found the use of crutch words to really slow down my fiction in the past. Namely using “was” and “had” too much. Adding excess words to sentences that didn’t need to be there. I think by eliminating that, I’ve managed to make my writing snappier.

But the best advice you can give to any writer is simply to do it. To write as much as you can. Writing craft books are great and they can really help inform what you do, but unless you do it often, all that advice is worthless.

Turn up. Do the work. It’s the only way.

Which of your characters is your favourite?

I’d probably say Dustin from my story named after him. It opens my collection and is the first story I was happy with my voice in. Dustin is effectively a costume of a cartoon tiger worn by staff at a rundown holiday resort in my story. There’s a lot of horror in my mind about that place. There are lots more things for Dustin to see.

Which of your books best represents you?

As the author of one full-length book the answer to this is pretty easy. Dark Missives. There are eleven stories in the book, pretty wide-ranging in terms of their themes and subjects. I like to think they provide a decent insight into the things that make me tick in terms of the fiction I like to read and write.

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

I’ve written five novels in the last few years. Some horror, some not. Ideally, I’d like to get at least one of them out there. I’ve just finished a novel, a near-future dystopian horror story. That’s a real passion project for me. I like that book. Now I need to make it shine and get it a home.

I’ve got a novella that I’m looking to home as well. It’s with beta readers at the minute so once that’s knocked into shape, I’ll have to find a plan for it.

If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?

I don’t know if this is a cliché but it bugs the hell out of me. People falling over as they run away from a killer/monster/alien. People hardly ever fall over, but as soon as they’re being chased, they fall all the time, usually dropping and smashing their phone etc. It’s so boring to see in a film or TV show. Ugh.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?


I really enjoyed Will Carver’s Hinton Hollow Death Trip. He has a delicious sense of bleak humour to everything he writes. I’d also highly recommend (if not more so) his novel Nothing Important Happened Today. This book is like my Fight Club. It has blown me open.

I’d also massively recommend My Sister, the Serial Killer by Oyinkan Braithwaite. Pretty much for the same reason, this book has a brutal, dark sense of humour. One of my favourite ever reads.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

Currently that question would be, do you want to go for a pint? The answer would be yes, as long as we can go back to 2019 in order to do so.