Despite his choice of subject matter, Lee Glenwright describes himself as, the nicest person called Lee Glenwright you could ever hope to meet. His short fiction has been published in the anthologies, 'Forever Hungry,' from Far Horizons Press, 'Mrs Rochester's Attic,' from Mantle Lane and 'O, Unholy Night in Deathlehem,' from Grinning Skull Press, among others. He has recently published 'Ripe, and Others,' his first collection of short fiction. Lee Glenwright lives in Sunderland UK, with his family, far too many reptiles, and a dark sense of humour. He can be stalked on Twitter (@LeeGlenwright) and Instagram (@leeglenwrightwriter), or through his Facebook page (@LeeGlenwrightWriter). He has an Amazon author page, and his website can be found at www.leeglenwright.weebly.com
 
 Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?
 
I don’t usually like talking about myself, but since that’s the whole point of an interview really, here goes. I first started writing when I was in my late teens and into my early twenties, stopping when the need to find gainful employment got in the way. About eight years ago, by now settled down with a family, I thought to myself that if I didn’t take it up again, I would end up a bitter old man, forever wondering, what if? My short fiction has been published in several small press anthologies and magazines and I’ve recently self-published my first stand-alone collection (Ripe, and Others). I live in Sunderland, in the North-East of England, with my family, a menagerie of reptiles and other pets, and the voices in my head that get louder if I stop writing for too long.


To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about the way you treated them in your work.
 
Most of them! I tend to get a buzz from writing characters into uncomfortable, yet inevitable situations. With that in mind, I don’t think too many of them would be overly pleased to meet me and it would probably end up being mutual. There is one character, a journalist called Frank Popper, who makes an appearance in a couple of my short stories, as well as two (so-far unpublished) novels. In my first few stories featuring him, I wrote him as an unashamed, grubby hack journo, with few redeeming features, something that he would probably be quick to complain about. In a second novel that I’m currently working on, he takes more of a central role, and I’ve made it my mission/challenge to make him a little more sympathetic.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
 
Ray Bradbury is my all-time favourite author, without a doubt. Although not horror in an explicit sense, so much of Bradbury’s work, especially his earlier tales, is incredibly dark. If you don’t believe me then check out stories such as The Whole Town’s Sleeping, Skeleton, The Man Upstairs and The Jar, all of which are a stone’s throw away from being out-and-out horror. Those last three are prime examples of body horror. His story, The Lake, is one of the few pieces of fiction to make me cry like a baby.
I draw inspiration from a variety of sources, too, usually by following some weird or obscure news story, or by taking a real or imagined situation and asking myself what if? But then again, that’s how all stories start out, right?
 
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?   


At the risk of sounding cliched, horror is more than a genre, it’s an emotion, a state of mind. There’s no other genre that has the same connotation or effect upon a reader or viewer. I think that horror tends to be slighted, looked down on, all too easily, to the extent that some writers experience more mainstream or literary success when they break away from it. I’ve already mentioned Ray Bradbury. His trick was to take themes that were often horrific, and relocate them to some otherworldly place, Mars for instance, thereby making them slot into the wider, more respected genre of fantasy. I think that horror is sometimes treated like a dirty little secret by those outside looking in, something that people like to enjoy vicariously, without always being quick to admit it. Seriously, everybody likes a good scare, even if they wouldn’t freely tell you so. Horror is a healthy genre, learning the limitations of your fear is an exhilarating experience, not a morbid one. Unfortunately, as long as certain arms of the media continue to label horror as something that can rot impressionable young minds, then the wider audience will continue to perceive it as such.

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?
 
Onwards and upwards. We’re living through strange, dark times at the moment. Given the current state of the world in general, there is just so much going on to influence writers, both seasoned and emerging. It seems to me that the genre goes through certain boom and bust cycles, and I feel like we’re on the threshold of one hell of a big boom. Horror seems to be permeating the mainstream at the moment, influencing so many movies and TV shows, the likes of which are gaining far more exposure than they would have even just a few years ago. I think the latest upward trend was kick-started by the likes of The Walking Dead (I lost interest in the series about three seasons ago, by the way), but there is plenty of real-life darkness going on right now to help things along, just like the genre has far more to offer than TV zombies.

Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?
 
Going back to something I said earlier, I reckon that, in many cases, the love of horror is a vicarious one, to which some people wouldn’t necessarily be quick to admit. My own feeling is that sometimes, if you read about the worst that can happen, then that makes reality a little easier to bear - something that seems to be getting more difficult sometimes in the current climate. More generally, I do think that a lot of people do get a sadistic kick out of seeing bad things happen, knowing that it’s okay, since no one really gets hurt. Kind of like guilt-free aggression, with a clear conscience at the end of it.

What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?
 
Me (I’m laughing on the inside)! Seriously though, of course, there’s always more room for diversity in the horror genre. The situation is changing on that front, but it is proving to be a slow process.

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

There are obvious cases where something that was a product of its time just wouldn’t wash with people nowadays. Things that were once considered acceptable, or in some cases almost lauded, are pretty much treated as taboo subjects today and, in the case of areas such as racism, quite rightly so. I feel that the work of authors such as Lovecraft can still be admired for what they are, but, at the same time, there has to be a degree of distance placed between the creator and his work. It is possible to learn a lot from HPL’s work whilst, rather than eschewing the negative aspects, learning from them too. We can’t hope to change peoples’ negative perceptions if we bury our collective heads in the sand and pretend that they don’t exist. It’s far better to confront that negativity and call it out for what it is. I have tried to incorporate variety and diversity into my own work where necessary, although I have been admittedly nervous about doing so, mainly for fear of doing a disservice. Representation is important, but it’s more important to get it right.

Does horror fiction perpetuate its own ghettoization?  For example Julia Armfield’s latest collection Salt Slow has a cover that most horror fans would walk past in a book shop, and is one that probably is not marketed as horror, does the genre’s obsession with horrific covers cause more harm than good?
 
Nah! As a kid, I used to love being freaked out by the garish, pulpy, downright bloody covers on the paperback stands in most local shops. I remember having several nights worth of nightmares just from looking at the cover to Stephen King’s ‘Salem’s Lot in a local department store. Some of those old covers actually suggested that you were going to get more than you actually ended up with anyway! About a year ago, I finally read a copy of Paperbacks from Hell, by Grady Hendrix. That book was such a blast down memory lane!

What new and upcoming authors do you think we should take notice of?
 
Rachel Autumn Deering made the successful transition from comics to prose fiction a few years ago now, and has a few things under her belt, so to speak. Her debut novella, ‘Husk,’ was a pretty impressive character study, focusing on real-life horrors, such as addiction, trauma and alienation. Worth checking out, if you haven’t already (which you have of course, right?)

What are the books and films that helped to define you as an author?
 
Books - I’ve already mentioned Ray Bradbury. I was also influenced by Robert Bloch, along with the more obvious choices, such as Lovecraft and Stephen King. Growing up, I was lucky enough to happen upon Russ Cochran’s EC Comics reprints from the early ‘90s, and I’m still the proud owner of complete runs of all the EC horror title reprints.
I was raised on the old Hammer movies. I’m old enough to remember ITV’s Fear on Friday, along with the first forays into 24-hour broadcasting, with the Night Network - Monday night was horror night! From there, I gravitated towards Romero, and Night of the Living Dead remains my all-time favourite movie. With Martin, George Romero crafted what I think is possibly the best ever vision of a vampire committed to film. That is what I hope to aspire to in my writing, something extraordinary that can be found hiding somewhere in the totally believable.

Are there any reviews of your work, positive or negative that have stayed with you?
 
No, as a new writer (albeit who has been practicing for a long time), I’ve yet to experience the joy/heartbreak of reviews of my work. One thing that has stayed with me though is a Tweet from Brian Keene. There was a Twitter discussion about traditional versus self-publishing, and I had yet to try my hand at the latter at the time. I made a comment along the lines that I was just submitting my work to whoever I thought might take an interest. Brian Keene replied to it, and his response was pretty supportive, something that has stuck with me. I’ve heard that his supportive nature is something that he’s renowned for.

What aspects of writing do you find the most difficult?
 
Finding the time. I have a full-time day job and a family, so time management is a struggle sometimes. Priorities, and all that.

Is there one subject you would never write about as an author?
 
Probably, but I haven’t found it yet. For a while, I shied away from writing anything sexual. I feel that it’s far too easy to write badly about sex, with the whole thing ending up contrived and forced-looking, or at worst, laughable. However, I’ve come to realise (no pun intended) that sex is sometimes a necessary evil in the horror genre, with the two things sometimes going hand in hand. The sex act involves insertion of one body part into another. If you were to describe it to a person from another planet in those sort of terms, what could be more horrific-sounding?

How important are names to you in your books? Do you choose the names based on liking the way it sounds or the meaning?
 
Wherever possible, I try to give my characters ordinary-sounding names. I usually want them to sound like the kind of people that you would walk past on the street, probably without looking twice at them. Doing so makes for more relatable characters, I think.
 
Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?


In my teens and early twenties, I used to write for the sake of the gross-out, although I wouldn’t have admitted it back then. Nowadays, I think I’ve grown, where it’s all about telling a story - one that just happens to have nasty things going on within it. I like to think that I’ve stopped emulating other writers, developing what I feel to be my own voice. With my first novel (currently unpublished), I primarily used first-person narration, and I tried to get a relaxed, almost conversational flavour into it. I wanted to create the illusion of having the reader engage in a conversation with the narrator, making him into someone that they could almost want to be friends with.

What is the best piece of advice you ever received with regards to your writing?
 
Ernest Hemingway was right; the first draft of anything is shit. Also, I once read in a biography of Roald Dahl, that he was notoriously slow and would sometimes only write 200 words a day. In my low moments, when things aren’t going well on the writing front, I’ll sometimes remind myself that it’s only storytelling, and if I can at least be as prolific as Roald Dahl then I’m doing good enough.

To many writers, the characters they write become like children, who is your favorite child, and who is your least favorite to write for and why?
 
I like my hack journalist, Frank Popper. He's getting easier to write as I become more familiar with him. Besides, it's fun to be able to write about someone so unashamedly seedy. For me, part of the enjoyment comes from writing about people as far removed from myself as possible. I don't think I've ever come across the problem of writing someone I hate yet. Bearing in mind some of the characters I have written about, perhaps that says more about them than it does about me.

For those who haven’t read any of your books, which of your books do you think best represents your work and why?
 
I wrote a story called ‘The Feast of Stephen’ for a 2018 Christmas charity anthology ‘O Unholy Night in Deathlehem’ from Grinning Skull Press. I was pretty proud of that, not just because of the association with a great cause (The Elizabeth Glaser Pediatric AIDS Foundation), but because it captured pretty well what I like to think I’m about as a writer; drawing upon a real life experience (I won’t say which part!) and building everything up into a not very nice payoff. A deserved payoff (it was a Christmas tale, after all), but a not very nice one, nonetheless.


Do you have a favorite line or passage from your work, and would you like to share it with us?
 
“Our scars are what shape us, define us. They are us.” A line from an unpublished short story I wrote, called Little Wounds: A Love Letter.
 
Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?
 
My first solo collection of short fiction, ‘Ripe, and Others,’ has just been self-published in both physical and ebook formats. I have what I hope will be my first novel, ‘Mutt,’ with about a dozen publishers and agents, I’m waiting on responses, which will determine where I go with it. I’m biding my time working on a second novel, a body horror tale with the working title of ‘Insatiable.’


If you could erase one horror cliché what would be your choice?
 
Sparkling vampires. Romero nailed it with ‘Martin.’

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?
 
Last great novel: ‘The Girl Next Door,’ by Jack Ketchum. I came to it shamefully late and found it a brutal read. I actually put it down more than once, thinking that I couldn’t finish it, but I’m glad that I did. Last non-fiction: ‘Paperbacks from Hell,’ by Grady Hendrix, I’ve already said why.
I’m not often disappointed by novels. One exception was ‘The Survivor,’ by James Herbert. It’s not that I thought the book was terrible, I love James Herbert’s work. I managed to guess the ending about three pages in, which is usually a killer for me.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
 
Q: “I really like the sound of your book, where can I buy a copy?”
A: “Check out Amazon.” I’ll give it time.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I don’t know if I have anything to add to that amazing bio. That was great, wasn’t it?
Let’s see, worked in tech for 20 years. Sick of it. Back when I started the Internet was all about bringing people together and optimism. Now it’s tracking codes, spyware, and trolls. So I’m going back to school to earn a masters degree in mathematics and teach at a junior college. After a career in the corporate world, I need another career to wash the lies out of my system and math is objective truth.
 
I also write, of course. This would be a pretty short author interview if I didn’t. Picking Up the Ghost is my first novel a young adult urban fantasy about ghosts, lies, and voodoo. It’s the first thing I’d ever written. One day I figured, “I’ve read a book before. It doesn’t seem too hard. I’ll give it a go.” And I did and it was. Hard that is. So I did it again.
 
The Faith Machine is my second novel, due out in May of 2020 (Preorder Now!). It’s a psychic espionage thriller. Like the game Control, the TV show Legion, or the book The Men Who Stare at Goats. I like this one enough to make a role-playing game out of it, and hope to Kickstart the game next year.

To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about they way you treated them in your work.

In Picking Up the Ghost there’s a ghost of a kid in a hospital who’s reliving his murder over and over. That’d be an awkward meeting. He didn’t deserve that.
 
In The Faith Machine, I put Agent 97:4 through the ringer, physically and spiritually. She’s a killer with electrokinesis, so that’d be the last excuse I ever make.

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

Comics. Specifically, superhero comics. It’s everywhere in my work. Picking Up the Ghost is Cinque’s Williams origin story. Sure he’s a shaman, but he’s also a super sorcerer. The Faith Machine is filled with superhero tropes; secret identities, powers, saving the world, etc. I’d like to live in a world where good defeats evil on the regular. It ain’t this one.
 
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 marketing term and an unfortunate reality of the publishing business. We’ve seen an uptick in quality horror in cinema recently, and that’s done a lot to destigmatize the genre. As movies go, so goes the culture. People will come around eventually.

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?

Surrealism. PBS Idea Channel has a great video about cultures after fascist movements run their course. They’re often followed by the surreal. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2bAN9pPeiE) Dadaism in Spain, all the weirdness that comes out of Japan, I’m not sure what the equivalent is for Germany.

I love surrealism, so I’m looking forward to it. The end of fascism would be nice too.

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

Safety. I’m hardly the first one to say this, but horror media allows one to expose themselves to the feelings and sensations of the horrific without the lasting physical effects. It’s an inoculation. Not any different than a roller-coaster.

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

There are so many people producing content in every medium and artform these days...is anything missing any more? I say that now, but as culture keeps moving along new possibilities open up. The only constant is change, so a new niche is forming and something’s coming to fill it. You can count on that.

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

As a middle-aged white guy, I’m starting to run into the liberal soapbox problem. No one wants to hear me say, “You know guys, racism is bad” There are plenty of writers of color out there saying it in their own voices. I’m not going to be able add anything to the conversation that Rod Serling and Gene Roddenberry didn’t back in the 60s.

What I can do is portray people of color, women, and queer people in roles formerly reserved for white males. Representation is my contribution to the movement.

I haven’t published anything with a white male main character. Picking Up the Ghost takes place in St Jude, a fictionalized version of East St. Louis which is 98% African-American. So all the people and most of the ghosts and loa are black. I’m not making a statement of any kind. It would be weird if they weren’t.

The diversity in The Faith Machine was deliberate. It has an ensemble cast of psychics. Like mutants in the X-Men, psychics manifest evenly across the population. As I built out the team, I took a moment to go through the roster and ask, “Is there any reason this character need to be a white guy?” The answer was always no, until I got to the end. Exposition Joe was the last character to assign a race and gender, so he got to be the white guy. Out of seven, there had to be one.

I don’t know if you can avoid offending someone somewhere, but if you write people as people, and not as caricatures, you’re on solid ground.

Does horror fiction perpetuate its own ghettoization?

All genres do. Again, this is an effect of how marketing parses media. We the consumers perpetrate this. In the early days of algorithm driven recommendation engines they seemed free from this kind of compartmentalization. But I suspect the market (us) rely on these labels, so we can all stay in our lanes.

I hope we can transcend genres someday, but that will require a better solution.

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

I wish I could tell you, but I’m out of touch with what’s going on. Like, across the board. News, music, movies, books, I haven’t got a clue what’s current in any media. What year is it again? Who’s the president now?
You’re kidding.

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

For a long time it was anything by Stephen King. That’s true for a lot of us. But when I tried to write like Stephen King it didn’t work. He’s a unique animal. Not a lot of authors can shoehorn entire short stories into the narrative and get away with it.

When it comes to movies, Blade Runner’s my jam. I often play the Final Cut while I’m writing, for inspiration. It’s as perfect as a movie gets. No filler.


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

On Picking Up the Ghost there’s more than one reader review along the lines of, “it starts to get good around chapter 3.” Ouch. I know where that came from. I had literary ambitions, and in literature ‘plot’ is a four letter word. That book’s opening could be tighter.
Because of that, now I write in tight prose, short scenes, and always moving, moving, moving.

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

This first draft is the worst draft. 90,000 words feel so far away, until it’s not. Then it feels exhausting. I much prefer rewriting to writing. Rewriting is like playing with clay. Writing is like passing clay, lots of clay.

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

Todd. Fuck that guy. He knows what he did.

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

Both. The phonics are very important. A big bad guy who goes by Billy is different than if he went by William. And my character names are almost always a deep cut reference to someone from the real world.
 
Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

It’s a constant battle between the rising forces of brevity and subtlety. A quest to communicate the most intent with the least amount of words without gushing about how clever I think I am.

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

In the second draft of Picking up the Ghost, Cinque spent the last half of the book in a pocket dimension called the halfway World. When I workshopped it, my group told me they hated it and that half had to be rewritten. They hated it because I’d taken Cinque away from the rest of the characters. Characters they liked.

I learned that a novel’s main character is not alone. They’re defined by their relationships.

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

I gotta say, I like writing them all. If I didn’t like writing a character then that character needs some work.

That said, writing Agent 97:4 is the most emotional experience I have writing. She has a core of righteous anger that I share, but she gets to express that anger. I’ve had to step away from the keyboard while writing her.

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

The Faith Machine, because it’s my most recent one. I’m working on its sequel so maybe that’s the best representation, but that one’s in its first draft, so no one’s going to see that for a long time.

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

No. But I will tell you about it. In The Faith Machine two characters have a conversation with God at the same time. In both conversations, God’s dialog is the same, but with different outcomes. I wanted to show that God was far above us. For Him, entire conversations were rote.
 
Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?

Maybe I’m pushing your definition of ‘book,’ but I’m finishing up work on ESPionage: The Role-Playing Game, based on the worldbuilding I did for The Faith Machine.

The novel was finished, and I also had two sequels outlined, plus a notebook full of ideas for future stories that came to me while doing research. I pored all of that into the RPG, and I ended up creating a series bible for the ESPionage property. In doing so, I discovered a few shortcomings that I was happy to fill.

For example; I’ve been using playing card terms as spy jargon for psychics. The psychic agents are ‘Cards,’ and their handlers were called Proposition Players. Well then the Proposition Players bosses have to be Dealers, right. And Dealers work for agencies called Tables. A nation or multinational organization with a number of Tables under its control is a House. And then the worldwide psychic espionage community is the Strip.

Next up, I’m working on the sequel to The Faith Machine, called The Bliss Gun. Like I said before, agent 97:4 went through a lot and lost a lot. This is her story of getting it all back. This time on her terms.


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

It would have been the Idiot Driven Plot, but I think everyone’s tired of that. Nowadays, you only see it if they’re lampshading it like they did in Cabin in the Woods. That said, some people pick on the Emotion Driven Plot the same way and that’s not valid. Horror especially is about emotional decision-making. There’s a tension there that you can’t get from rational decision-making.

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

I recently reread Mike Carey’s run on the Lucifer comic. A spin-off of Sandman that follows the titular character after he’s given up the key to Hell. It’s refreshing to have a protagonist who isn’t a hero, but still worth rooting for.

I won’t share any disappointments. I try not to bash other authors, especially online.

What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?
​
Would you like a job? And, “Probably. Tell me more.”

I’m open to work for hire jobs, but I’m terrible at professional networking. Hopefully, after the second novel and the RPG are published I’ll get some offers. I’d like to write for an existing property, especially one with a marketing team. Selling your own product is exhausting.

Here at The Ginger Nuts of Horror, we’re always trying to provide readers with quality news, reviews, and interviews that can’t be found anywhere else. We’ve really outdone ourselves this time, though. What you are about to read is the first of its kind, an interview conducted through the power of time travel!
 
Thanks to the good scientists at the Institute of Future Technology, we here at GNOH have the opportunity to send questions back the ancient year of 1988, where they will be intercepted by author, butcher, and smut expert extraordinaire Jeff O’Brien, who will then bury his answers in a time capsule to be unearthed in modern times. It’s a lot of trouble to go through for an interview, but GNOH has spared no expense. Read on and find out what O’Brien can tell us about his recent visit to the past and his latest book, John Titor is an Asshole.
 
So Jeff, the book is about how you were transported against your will from the year 2018 all the way back to 1988. How have you been holding up?
 
Well, for starters, I’m sitting here in 1988 holding a copy of a book that I wrote in 2019 about experiences I had in 2018. Confusing, right? The real Men in Black used their time traveling abilities to give me a copy of the book. I’m hoping I can hold onto it until I get back to 2019 because then, when I get back, I won’t even have to go through the whole writing process. I can just type out what’s already in the book and publish it. Time travel sure can be a hassle, but look at all the work it’s gonna save me!
Sadly 1988 isn’t as different as I thought it would be. Lots of smoke everywhere. I almost forgot you used to be able to smoke indoors pretty much everywhere. I decided to start again. I quit in 2013, but I figure since I’m in 1988 it doesn’t count. So I’ve got that going for me. And I’m gonna be going to the mall in a little bit. Remember malls in the 80s? I can’t wait to see that shit again.
 
What do you like the most about being back in the ‘80s? What do you miss most about 2019?
 
I’m most excited about experiencing this year as an adult. The first time I was in 1988 I was only 7 years old. I’m gonna try to make the most of this experience while I’m back here. My top priority is finding a Bradlee’s or Zayre’s some other defunct department store with a Nintendo console in the electronics section. I’m gonna school those kids in Legend of Zelda with no map, and trick them into thinking I’m some Nintendo wizard from the future. Oh wait, I AM just that.
 
As far as what I miss most about 2019, damn I dunno. Technology and stuff. I keep looking at my cell phone and remembering I can’t get internet access. I guess I’m gonna have to go buy a spank mag or two after this interview is over.
 
Have you found yourself in any other eras since your journey began? Do you have any favorite time periods, or least favorite ones? Are there any periods you haven’t gotten to visit that you would like to?
 
Oh yes. I first landed here in 1988. Then I had the misfortune of waking up in cowboy times. Wild West. I don’t even know what year it was. I was not there under the most pleasant of circumstances, and had to duel the sheriff because he claimed I banged his daughter or something. That’s not even why that era is my least favorite, though. People fucking stunk back then, dude. Their pits. Their breath. Everything. Even the rich people and the pretty ladies in the fancy dresses. Very unpleasant. Would not recommend. Then I landed in 2008. Let me tell you, 2008 was just as boring as I remembered it. I also had an unpleasant run-in with Chris Hansen from Dateline NBC’s To Catch a Predator, but you’ll have to read the book to get the skinny on that. Then I got chased by the real Men in Black to 1999 and got to relive my glory days as a high school emo boy. The quest pretty much ended there, but I got sent back to 1988 to take care of some unfinished business. And here I am writing out the answers to this interview sent from some scientist guys claiming they’re associated with Ginger Nuts of Horror.
 
And as long as the trip could be brief, I’d like to go to the Giza Plateau whenever the Pyramids were built. I gotta see that shit in real time. But I’m very pale, burn easy, and hate heat. So I can’t stay there very long.
 
Tell us about some of the interesting characters and personalities you’ve encountered in your adventures. A little birdy told me that you got to meet one of my favorite oft-overlooked ‘80s scream queens Mistress Osirah. What’s that been like?
 
Yes, I’m at her place right now. Her real name is Sarah Bartlett. Pretty sure she has the hots for me. Not because I’m hot or anything. I think she just likes the allure of me being a mystical time traveler. I did also rescue her from nearly being sacrificed on a stone altar by John Titor, so that might be helping me a little too. She’s got a great VHS collection of forgotten horror movies, most of which she starred in. Hopefully I’ll be able to spread the word about her when I get back home to 2018 and revive her career, unless I come back to find a whole different 2018 where she’s still famous. I did mention the reason I’m here is to give her sage perv advice from the future on how she can shift her appearance to something more timeless, right? Straighten that hair and lower those thong straps. Yeah, she literally had me sent back in time 30 years for that.
 
I haven’t done much socializing in my timely travels, since until now that the quest is over, I had to focus mainly on the task at hand. The only other person I’ve spent any real time with is that asshole John Titor. He’s a shifty scumbag who wears way too much disgusting cologne. That’s all I have to say there.
 
Before finding yourself the victim of this chronal conundrum, did you have any interest in time travel prior? I believe one of the individuals involved in plucking you from 2018 was the infamous time traveler John Titor. What can you tell us about him? How familiar were you with Titor before this adventure?
 
I had no interest in it whatsoever. I mean, I’ve been to the edge of the Flat Earth dimension. I’ve seen some shit. But time travel was the one thing I didn’t think was actually possible. Yet here I am. And yes, Titor was the one who plucked me and sent me. It’s all his doing. Sure backfired on him though.
 
I also thought the whole John Titor thing was a total hoax that originated from Art Bell’s old message board. That’s the last time I approach something with a closed mind.
 
Is there any truth to the rumor that your encounter with John Titor recently attracted the attention of a second, imposter John Titor who has threatened to write a hatchet-job book about you? What can you tell us about that?
 
Yes, that is 100% true. All I can really say is check out his video about me on his YouTube channel. I think it’s titled “Jeff O’Brien Cyber Bully Internet Troll Writer” or something like that. The guy is like 130 years old and I doubt he’s really going to write the book. I’d never be lucky enough to have that kind of publicity.
 
As incredible and as hard to believe it is, this journey through the time-stream is not the first real-life adventure that you’ve written about. Would you mind telling us about some of your other amazing experiences and where interested parties can read about them?
 
Ahh, yes. As I previously mentioned, I’ve discovered the truth behind the multiverse and traveled to the Flat Earth dimension. Earth is flat, man. Just not the physical one we live on. That little trip brought a lot of other places too, specifically the bunker miles below Denver International Airport where there is an underground railway that takes you through the dimensional gateway and to the very edge of the Flat Earth dimension. This is all chronicled in my memoir Journey to the Edge of the Flat Earth, available on Amazon for a reasonable price.
 
Finally, what other artefacts have you included in the time capsule containing your interview answers, and why?
 
Had I know this interview was going to happen, and in such a way, I would have come better prepared. Best I can do is a banana Twinkie and a box of Nintendo cereal. Since those don’t exist in 2019 I’ll consider sharing them with you as a thanks for reaching out and giving me this great publicity. Thanks, William! I hope this time capsule finds you well.

Today we welcome writer Paul Hart Wilden to the site to talk about his quest to the lost horror movie Skinner. 

At one time thought a lost film, Skinner has been resurrected from obscurity in a mind-blowing 4K restoration so cult cinema fans can now witness this 90s horror gem in all its sinful, sleazy and violent glory.

Dennis Skinner seems like a normal enough guy but he has a very abnormal hobby. At night, he creeps through the back streets looking for potential victims, and when he finds one, carefully removes their skin with an elaborate collection of knives. Heidi, one of Dennis' victims, is on his trail, waiting for a chance to get her revenge, but in the meantime Dennis has developed a crush on Kerry and wants to find a way to show her he really cares.

Starring: Ted Raimi (Spider-Man), Traci Lords (Blade), David Warshofsky (There Will Be Blood), Richard Schiff (Se7en) and Rikki Lake (Hairspray). Directed by Ivan Nagy (The Hitchhiker) and written by Paul Hart Wilden (Alone). This marks Skinner’s UK debut on any format. 

​

How did you first get involved with the project?
 
I’d written a movie called Living Doll. I’d managed to get the script into the hands of infamous film producer Dick Randall who was living and working in London. He was quite taken with the script and within half an hour of meeting him had agreed to buy it and make it into a movie. Living Doll had been a ‘study of the problems of unrequited love in teenage youth’ as I used to explain it to people or, as other people had said, it’s a necrophilia movie. Which meant that for movie #2 I needed a new angle to pursue. We’d been through the serial killer boom of the 1980s, the world was changing as was the world of the horror movie. I’d read about Ed Gein, H. H. Holmes, real life cannibals and all sorts… so I had my idea, I wrote the script. Now, like with the previous stack of papers, all I needed to do was go out, meet someone, have them buy it and another notch on the filmmaking bedpost would be mine.
 
Can you tell us a little about how Skinner was first released? Did it go into cinemas or onto home video?
 
Skinner was made back in the days when there was only one medium for film - 35mm. So, the hope (at least in my head) had been that at some point the movie would be finished and released upon the world via various movie theatres. But the path out into the world wasn’t smooth. For various reasons the movie got mired in the ‘straight-to-video’ world of the 90s a couple years after it was produced, so any real attention the movie had was cold by the time it hit the streets.
 
This was Ted Raimi’s first or second movie as a leading man and even his brother’s Evil Dead wasn’t enough to generate the kind of interest you’d probably get today in similar circumstances. Traci Lords move to ‘respectable’ acting was still very much direct-to-video faire that wasn’t mainstream. Even Ricki Lake’s daytime TV show and the John Waters connection weren’t enough to bring in either an audience or notoriety – especially as even to this day I think she pretty much has refused to acknowledge or speak about the movie. Richard Schiff was just beginning his career. Why it never really caught the eye of Fangoria (the one real outlet for horror movie publicity in those days) is still a mystery to this day. It really is one of life’s great mysteries as to why it never seemed to gain any kind of traction at all. To add to the weight of disadvantage, by the time the various parties involved managed to get the movie out to the public, a movie called The Silence of the Lambs had been released to worldwide acclaim, so Skinner was seen by most people as just a shameless attempt to ride someone else’s coat tails.
 
But come out it did… on good old VHS tapes. The original US distributor seemed to consider the 10,000 or so units they shipped a decent amount for a movie ‘of this type’. It then made its way to Laserdisc and then onto DVD. The people then responsible for putting the movie out into the world on the new-fangled DVD format either didn’t care or didn’t seem to notice that the version they put out was not only heavily censored but also of such atrocious technical quality that it rendered the movie almost unwatchable. Then it appeared on a weird two movie DVD with another underperforming project called The Surgeon. There was the initial US release, then it appeared in a French language version, South American iterations in both Spanish and Portuguese, a version from somewhere in the Czech Republic, a Japanese release, a version in Hong Kong under the title of Skin Person Devil (still my favourite) and a seemingly bootlegged PAL version in Australia that I still can’t find the origin of.
 
At what point did Skinner become a 'lost film'?
 
I guess in some ways it became a ‘lost film’ pretty much from the moment I signed a contract and turned over the rights for my script to be made into a movie. Not wishing to sound trite or flippant, whatever confluence of circumstances that lead to the creation of the film and its subsequent journey out into the world, everything just came together in a perfect storm of events that meant it disappeared from the zeitgeist.
 
I realised pretty quickly that it wasn’t going to be the ‘next big step’ on my career path and was more of a big fucking stumble… so the fact that barely anyone saw it or new about it was in some ways a bit of a relief as I could retreat with my ego a little battered and hope to regroup and try again (hopefully) without too much residual damage.
 
But time moves on and as we get older things take on a different aspect as we look back at them. I watched a documentary series on TCM (Turner Classic Movies) about the restoration and preservation of movies and how many of the classics no longer existed in any physical form. I read a newspaper article about some scenes from King Kong turning up in a garbage dumpster in New Zealand... and one of my favourite movies The Wicker Man is legendary in forever being incomplete because scenes were cut out and the negatives dumped in a freeway construction site… and then it suddenly struck me... what if Skinner just disappeared off the face of the Earth. Would anyone notice? Would anyone care?
 
And at that point I had to re-evaluate my own relationship to the movie. What I had turned my back on was a part of my growth as a writer, it was a part of my personal history in the movie industry and whether the end result had turned out to be a pile of garbage or a misunderstood classic or just a noble experiment that hadn’t come out as intended… it had begun from an honest place. I had wanted to write a horror movie that would be part of what we all know and love as part of the history of horror and the end result deserved at least someone caring enough about it to make sure it didn’t just disappear from existence.
 
Suppose that shitty DVD transfer or the unwatched Laserdisc in my closet were the only remaining evidence that this film ever existed and the only (apart from a VHS copy that the dog used as a chew toy) physical copies of the movie.
 
So, all of this made me realize... there had to be a 35mm negative of this movie and at least one 35mm print somewhere. The only real question was… where?
 
When was the film re-discovered and how?
 
I’d maintained a vague social media/email type friendship with the film’s producer and his assistant from the time and so figured they’d be the best place to start with any inquiries .The producer, Brad Wyman, had nothing to add regarding the current ownership or whereabouts of the movie other than the company name that appeared on the IMDB listing.
 
I contacted Image Entertainment who had produced the Laserdisc version of Skinner but their only response was that they didn’t keep track of where the rights reverted to once they lapsed. Cinequanon were the original sales company but they were no longer in existence and the owner, Daniel Sales, had died some years ago - but I was able to track down one of the former associates who advised me to contact a certain ‘FD’ who was responsible for handling the affairs of Daniel Sales and so might be able to shed some light on where ‘things’ might have gone after the passing of the owner and the company. I contacted him and although he initially said he did not know of the whereabouts of any elements or ownership – subsequent pestering on my part got him to admit there was a storage unit that might have something inside and that the next time he visited it, he would report back about what he might find. Subsequent ‘pestering’ only brought up that he was ‘still looking into the matter’.
 
I then got a response from JK (one of the editing assistants). He suggested I contact a company called Crest Digital where he remembered dropping off a work print at some time in the past. I contacted Crest in Hollywood and would you believe it - they had a copy of the movie - a box containing 10 reels of… something. When I opened the box, inside were the ten white boxes, each containing a reel of 35mm film. But it was a workprint. So after all these years, all I’d come up with was a picture but no sound? Yes, it seemed so. But was it even the complete picture?  And did the box of work print reels contain the fully intact version of the movie or a censored and incomplete version?
 
In 2012 I got a Facebook message from Dave Gregory at Severin Films. ‘This is DG, can you give me a call about Skinner. I was out drinking with JK and he told me you were looking for it.’ It turned out that David had been looking for the elements for 4 or 5 years, having been contracted by a company who owned the rights to the movie to put together some BTS stuff.
 
DG gave me the name of a company and a person - and a phone number. I contacted the company and it turned out they owned the rights to Skinner.
 
So... suddenly my 35mm workprint looked like a highly valuable asset which in conjunction with the sound from an existing video master... might just about be the makings of a newly minted version of Skinner. But when the workprints were examined we heard that, ‘it’s full of grease pencil marks and debris and tape splices. I could have it sonically cleaned and then do a test transfer to better gauge the quality. Otherwise, the colour and condition are very good but it’s an untimed element so grading will take twice as long. I’m not sure if it’s the uncut version either but once I find time to get to the other reels I’ll know more. In the meanwhile, never give up the search for the negative!"
 
So once again, the curse of ‘Skinner’ had struck… The 35mm negative had to be out there somewhere, even a 35mm print of the film would be something, it was just a matter of tracking it down before it vanished forever.
 
Thanks to Facebook page I met a guy called David Austin. It turned out he not only knew the movie but was actually a fan of it, probably not too much of a stretch to say a very big fan. David had been down this road before and had actually been involved in finding elements of movies that had supposedly been lost. So we’d talk about where Skinner might be or how to go find it and I’d talk him through all the efforts I’d made over the years and something kept sticking in the back of my head every time we spoke.
 
I’ve no idea why, but I just couldn’t shake the notion that a certain person with the initials FD (remember him from earlier) had more to tell than they would let on. I had no proof. I hadn’t spoken to the man in over a decade and when I had, he’d promised me that if he ever remembered or came across anything, he’d let me know… surely that decade of silence only meant one thing. I couldn’t shake the idea that he’s somehow the key to all this, but he’d been as much of a dead end as every other avenue I’d tried.
           
David said: ‘Just let me speak to him. I’ve done this before. If he has something, I know what it’ll take to make him give it up.’  Like I said, this had been more than ten years of fruitless effort, I wasn’t even sure if I could or should ever find what I was looking for… but why not take the easy option and let someone else do some lifting at least to see. I dug out the contact phone number I had for FD, not knowing it if even worked or to be honest if he was even still alive, and handed it off to David.
 
David called back. ‘I spoke to him. He’s got it and we’ll have it next week.;
Me: ‘Excuse me?’
David: ‘It’s done. He’ll ship it to where you want it to go.’
Me: ‘Are you serious? What did you do? What did you say?’
David: ‘I’ve dealt with people like this before. I know what he wanted.’
Me: ‘And what might that be?’
David: ‘Money.’
 
And that ladies and gentlemen is how we’re now sitting here with a beautiful 4k restoration of Skinner. That’s honestly all it took, one of the earliest connections I tried turned out to be the key all along. To this day, I have no idea what was said in that phone call or how much David actually handed over – but whatever it was and however much it took, it worked. I never even got to see what was in the discovery. It was shipped directly from wherever FD had it to the company in Illinois who ‘owned’ the distribution rights.
 
We found Skinner, managed to dig up the original camera negative and got it into the hands of the people who needed it and they put together a beautiful 4k restoration of the movie that became available to one and all. It was a long journey, but the work is done; over 25 years since the movie was originally made and over 10 years since I first began efforts to try and track it down and bring it back from the dead.
 
So now we’re here, I want to give my immense thanks to all the people I met in the course of this journey and who contributed to tracking it down and ensuring that what at one time looked like a lost cause turned out to be anything but.
 
How do you feel now that fans can now see Dennis Skinner's horrendous crimes in this 4K restoration?
 
Time and distance lend an entirely different perspective to all aspects of life – and so it is with my relationship with Skinner. All my disappointment and resentment at dreams dashed, ambition unfulfilled has gone away and I have a much more mature perspective on things. It was quite something to sit in a movie theatre in Hollywood, beside Ted Raimi, with a sold-out audience to watch the movie.
 
The work that went into producing the 4K release is quite something. The movie looks great and more importantly it sounds great. That was the biggest revelation to me when watching it again for the first time in a quarter century… you can actually hear the music and get a whole new appreciation for the work that Keith Arem (Contagion) put into the movie which adds a great depth to the film and is something I wish we’d all been able to appreciate way back in the day.
 
I’m grateful for the people I’ve met along the way as part of the rediscovery of the film, the friendships and connections that have been born out of the journey.
 
So yeah, it’s all good.
 
101 presents Skinner on dual format Blu-ray and DVD now
 
Amazon: https://amzn.to/363exlJ

 
That said, coming into this film I knew that this is exactly how these movies are now made – and they’ve just completed 12 of them in a year. That is an insane and impressive achievement. So for me it was about coming in and making the best damn movie I could within those parameters. And that’s the same with all of the filmmakers on this. Sophia Takal, Nacho Vigalondo, Gigi Saul Guerrero, Daniel Stamm, Patrick Lussier… doesn’t matter if it’s your first movie, or your eighth. We all get the same shake. And what’s great about Blumhouse is that they give you the freedom to create your movie with 100% encouragement.
 
All that aside, the biggest challenge for me was post production. My mother sadly passed away a week before my director’s cut was due, so I had to fly back to London and consult on the edit from London. It wasn’t easy, but we eventually got there, and I couldn’t be more proud of the film, and excited to share it with a FrightFest audience.
 
Your breakthrough movie was the much praised documentary BEWARE THE MOON: REMEMBERING AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (2009). John Landis introduced the film at FrightFest, Was that a defining moment in your career?
 
It certainly was at the time, and without BEWARE THE MOON I wouldn’t have met Reece Shearsmith, which means HIM INDOORS wouldn’t have happened, which means no THE BODY either.  So it was definitely the moment that kickstarted everything for me. I got to say thank you to John by giving him a cameo in my feature adaptation of THE BODY.
 
You began your career as a writer / journalist, specialising in horror cinema. Would you say those roots have helped you grow as a filmmaker?
 
Absolutely. Not only in the sense that your own research leads you to discover movies that had previously passed you by, but had I not been a staff writer at Horrorhound in 2006, I would never have written the 25th retrospective on AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON that lead to the documentary

Paul in 2009
 
In terms of my current projects, they’re littered with Easter eggs to movies I love. It’s always fun when someone sends me a tweet that they’ve spotted something new.
 
You’ve also written a couple of books: LOST IN THE SHADOWS - The Story of The Lost Boys and BEWARE THE MOON - The Story of An American Werewolf in London. Any literary plans for the future?
 
I’m an ‘idle hands’ kind of guy. I can’t sit and not do anything. These were done purely out of frustration, waiting for movie projects to green light. They were a lot of fun, but I have no desire to do anymore.
 
I also did some creature performing during that time. I played a sand monster in a Mark Gatiss written episode of DOCTOR WHO (which reunited me with Reece Shearsmith) and then spent the best part of a year on SOLO – A STAR WARS STORY as a wookiee.
 
Do you have a favourite bunch of horror movies? You’re not allowed to list AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON!
 
I do, but you know what, the older I get the more I feel my sensibilities getting tamer and tamer. I couldn’t watch a movie like MARTYRS again. Or LAST HOUSE ON THE LEFT for that matter. One thing that has never changed is my love for THE EXORCIST, which to this day I still believe is the greatest movie ever made. George Romero’s DAWN OF THE DEAD also remains a comfort movie of mine – as is De Palma’s CARRIE. I watch that movie whenever I’m about to start shooting a new movie. It’s my lucky rabbit’s foot.
 
Q: How do you view the current state of the genre, particularly in Britain? Are there any current home-grown directors you admire?
 
I think horror across the globe is thriving. The world is a mess right now, and from chaos comes creativity. It was the same in 1968 and it’s the same today. That said, I’d love to see more studios and production companies taking a chance on UK talent. I’ve made two movies studio movies for Blumhouse yet I’d still love to make a movie here at home. The horror genre in Britain continues to be treated as an embarrassment that is kept on the naughty step. There’s a lot of pissed off creative people out there, and Brexit has only pissed us off even more. The British Jordan Peele or Ari Aster could be lying in dormant, but we’ll never know that until attitudes in British film funding change. This is the home of Hammer Horror, for Christ sake! It’s time horror became a staple of the British film industry once again. The talent is there… USE US!!!!
 
As for home grown directors who I enjoy and find inspiring… Edgar Wright, Neil Marshall, Corin Hardy, Ben Wheatley. I also loved Alice Lowe’s work on PREVENGE. I’d love to see more women having opportunities to tell genre stories in the UK. I don’t think we’ve caught up with the US yet in that respect.
 
Finally, what’s next for you?
 
UNCANNY ANNIE came out I the US on October 4th so right now I’m reading a million and one screenplays to make sure what’s next is something I believe in and feel passionate about. There are a couple of things in the pipeline, but until anything is signed, I can’t really talk about them. In addition, I’m also writing my own material again, which is pretty much what I’m spending my time doing right now.
 
UNCANNY ANNIE is at 3.15pm at Cineworld, Leicester Sq. on Sat 2 Nov, as part of the Arrow Video FrightFest Halloween all-dayer. 
Where Paul will be introducing the film.
www.frightfest.co.uk
 
​

Today we are honoured to kick off the the blog tour for The Dead Girls Club by Damien Angelica Walters.  

Damien Angelica Walters is the author of Sing Me Your Scars, winner of This is Horror's Short Story Collection of the Year, Paper Tigers, and the forthcoming Cry Your Way Home. Her short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in The Year's Best Dark Fantasy & Horror and The Year's Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda's Song, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. Until the magazine's closing in 2013, she was an Associate Editor of the Hugo Award-winning Electric Velocipede. Find her on Twitter @DamienAWalters or on the web at http://damienangelicawalters.com.

Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?

I’m Damien Angelica Walters, the author of The Dead Girls Club, Cry Your Way Home, Paper Tigers, and Sing Me Your Scars. My short fiction has been nominated twice for a Bram Stoker Award, reprinted in Best Horror of the Year, The Year’s Best Dark Fantasy & Horror, and The Year’s Best Weird Fiction, and published in various anthologies and magazines, including the Shirley Jackson Award Finalists Autumn Cthulhu and The Madness of Dr. Caligari, World Fantasy Award Finalist Cassilda's Song, Nightmare Magazine, and Black Static. I live in Maryland with my husband and two rescued pit bulls and a to-read pile the size of Texas.

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

Definitely Margaret Atwood, Joyce Carol Oates, Alice Hoffman, and Agatha Christie. The characters the first three authors create are always so vivid, so real, and the latter was a genius when it comes to twists and surprises and hiding clues so well you don’t even realize what they are. She definitely set the stage for every novel with a twist you don’t see coming.

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

Because it’s controlled fear. The world is a terrifying place with monsters that can tear you and your life apart. And by monsters, I mean things like overdue bills, health insurance woes, medical problems, active shooter drills in our schools, all the things we can’t seem to escape from. Reading about fictional monsters and evil characters allows you to leave the everyday horrors behind for a time.

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

Stronger visibility for women and writers of color. Even in 2019, it’s not where it should be. I still see lists of favorite books/stories that contain only work written by white men and what’s upsetting is when no one seems bothered by it at all or even seems to notice at all.

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

Gratuitous animal or child abuse. I don’t feel that writing about cruelty to the small and powerless for cruelty’s sake is interesting or edgy. With that being said, I also feel there are ways to write about both subjects that aren’t gratuitous, with the trauma happening off-stage.   

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

There will be negative reviews, there will be plenty of readers who don’t like your work, but stressing over what you can’t control is pointless. It’s wonderful advice I try to follow, try being the operative word because of course I’m only human. Sometimes harsh reviews hurt, but all you can do is move forward and keep writing.  

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

I suspect Cry Your Way Home showcases my range as a storyteller well because it spans several genres. But I know there are people who don’t care for short stories, so perhaps they’d enjoy The Dead Girls Club which is a suspense/horror/mystery hybrid.


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

There are always darlings in any story or novel. Some end up on the cutting board, others get to stay. But there are also sentences that seem simple or even lackluster but they stick out in my memory because it’s where part of the story fell into place or something about a character became clear while I was writing it.  
One of my favorite lines from The Dead Girls Club is the chant the girls say: “Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face” because that simple phrase is what birthed the story of the Red Lady in my head.  
 
The Dead Girls Club has a dual timeline for its narrative, what’s the hardest part of writing a book that covers distinct timelines?

The hardest part was creating and keeping the two voices distinct. I didn’t want young Heather to sound like adult Heather. Also, there’s a call and response between the narratives in many places and keeping those in order was sometimes tricky, especially in the editing phase, when I moved a few scenes from one chapter to another.   

The Dead Girls club is a group of girls obsessed with the dark stuff, do any of the members of the club represent you in any way, or are they all splinters of you in some way?

I remember being drawn to darker things – movies, books, television shows – at that age, so in that respect, yes, they represent me. But once on the page, they took on their own personalities and became their own people. And honestly, I think most young girls all go through a stage where darkness holds a fascination so they represent all of us, not just me.

Heather has been described in a couple of reviews as being unlikeable, why do you think we still have a hang up about protagonists being likeable?

It’s interesting because I don’t see the same complaints when a male character is unlikeable. That’s curious, don’t you think? What it says to me is that we still expect women, even fictional women, to smile and be nice, so to speak. We don’t want difficult women. We don’t want unpleasant women. We want women who fit a narrow definition of femininity.  
 
But I don’t think we need to like characters in books. Joe from You by Caroline Kepnes is horrid. So, too, are Nick and Amy in Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl, and plenty of readers despise Eva Khatchadourian from We Need to Talk About Kevin. I think it’s possible to not like a main character and still enjoy the story.
 
What's the one question you wish you would get asked but never do?  And what would be the answer?

​What’s your favorite dinosaur? I think everyone should have a favorite. As an adult, my favorite is Deinonychus. As a child, it was Ankylosaurus. When I was small, I had a whole slew of plastic dinosaurs that I played with and treasured for years and years. Now, I have several larger ones that sit on a bookcase shelf and they make me smile.
 
That was more fun than something writing related, wasn’t it?

A supernatural thriller in the vein of A Head Full of Ghosts about two young girls, a scary story that becomes far too real, and the tragic--and terrifying--consequences that follow one of them into adulthood.Red Lady, Red Lady, show us your face...
In 1991, Heather Cole and her friends were members of the Dead Girls Club. Obsessed with the macabre, the girls exchanged stories about serial killers and imaginary monsters, like the Red Lady, the spirit of a vengeful witch killed centuries before. Heather knew the stories were just that, until her best friend Becca began insisting the Red Lady was real--and she could prove it.
That belief got Becca killed.
It's been nearly thirty years, but Heather has never told anyone what really happened that night--that Becca was right and the Red Lady was real. She's done her best to put that fateful summer, Becca, and the Red Lady, behind her. Until a familiar necklace arrives in the mail, a necklace Heather hasn't seen since the night Becca died.
The night Heather killed her.
Now, someone else knows what she did...and they're determined to make Heather pay.

The horror genre has long been a home for those looking to exorcise, or just exercise, their personal demons. Author Sam Richard knows that far too well. In 2017, Richard suffered one of the worst tragedies many of us could likely imagine. Like most deep wounds, that tragedy left behind a scar. That scar is a book. And that book is To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows.
 
Richard’s debut short story collection, To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows hits bookshelves and storefronts this month courtesy of NihilismRevised. In anticipation of its release, Richard gave The Ginger Nuts of Horror free reign to pick his brain… and his scabs.
 
Before anything I just wanted to say thank you, Sam, for taking a minute to answer my questions.
 
William! Thank you so much!
 
First off, for any readers who might be unfamiliar, could you introduce yourself a little, give a bit of background on who you are and on your writing, editing, and publishing endeavors?
 
For sure, sorry if this is novella length.                            
 
I’m a weird and transgressive horror writer from Minneapolis, MN. I am also the owner and editor of Weirdpunk Books. I started out merely the editor when Emma Alice Johnson started the press, but a couple of years ago she passed the whole thing over to me. When she was still running it, she published and we co-edited two anthologies: Blood for You: A Literary Tribute to GG Allin and Hybrid Moments: A Literary Tribute to the Misfits. She passed it to me in the midst of publishing Zombie Punks Fuck Off, which I ended up roping CLASH Books into co-releasing with me as I was out of my depths as a first-time publisher, haha. Up next is The New Flesh: A Literary Tribute to David Cronenberg, which is a bit of a change for the press, as it isn’t punk/music forward, but I decided that for me, as head of the press, the punk aspect is more the DIY spirit in which I publish and the ethos of how I run the press and less the over-arching outward aesthetic, as I was getting a little burnt out with music-themed anthologies. Plus, Brendan Vidito, my co-editor on The New Flesh, and I came up with the idea for this anthology ages ago, so I was excited to finally make it a reality. It will be out in November.
 
As for my own writing, it has mostly been anthology and magazine placements, with my debut short-story collection, To Wallow in Ash and Other Sorrows, coming out on October 11th, which collects some of these previously published pieces, as well as some that haven’t been seen yet. Seven of the nine stories were written in the wake of my wife’s death in August of 2017.
 
A short, three story anthology I worked on with Jo Quenell and Katy Michelle Quinn called LAZERMALL is currently on preorder at filthyloot.com, too. It’s lazer-inclusive mall-horror that started out a joke but we’re all super proud of it. I also am currently shopping a small-creature horror novella with a satanic-panic aspect that I was writing when Mo died.
 
What came first, writing or editing and publishing? What inspired you to get into the latter? Has being a writer yourself had an effect on how you view editing/publishing, or vice versa?
 
Writing for sure. I’ve been writing since Junior High and wrote four terrible novels in my very early 20s. I got into editing through Emma, specifically for Blood for You. She was like, ‘I’m gonna do this thing and you’re gonna do it with me!’ and I just couldn’t say no, haha. And it has only grown from there.
Being an editor has, 100% without a doubt, made me a better writer. If you want to improve your writing game, read slush. This gives you a lesson on what doesn’t work. It also shows you the incredibly common story-types people write. Plus, working with so many talented writers over the years has afforded me an inside view that I wouldn’t otherwise have had, and that has been super helpful.
Having a foot in both worlds, so to speak, has given me a good perspective on submitting to publications, as well as being accepted/rejected by them. I know so much more about what it’s like on that other side (from either role) that I try my best to do everything with compassion and not take rejection personally.
 
So let’s focus in on your first short story collection, To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows. The big subject that demands to be talked about, as it’s so much of what this book is about, is your wife, Mo, who in 2017 passed away suddenly without warning. You mention in the book’s introduction that some of the stories included were written just a couple weeks after that happened. The stories themselves very straightforwardly confront your feelings from that time. Did it take a lot of effort to push those stories out of you or were they practically begging to come out? What did writing those stories do for you at that point in your life? And lastly, did you ever have second thoughts about writing or publishing them?
 
It took a lot of effort to try to begin writing at that time, but once I did, they just poured out of me. “To Wallow in Ash” and “We Feed This Muddy Creek” were days 16 and 17, as in on day 16 I wrote that entire story, basically as it is now, same with the following day with the following story. But it was a weird, horrible process as they bled out of me. I had to confront a lot of things that I didn’t even know I was feeling yet, as I was just 100% in shock. It’s strange to look back at those and try to place myself in the headspace they were written in, to be honest, as much of that time I simply don’t remember a ton of.
 
What they did for me was allow me to begin processing what had happened in a way that I didn’t know I needed, because I didn’t know what I needed other than for her to not be dead. So writing those stories was a way to try to even understand what had happened. “To Wallow in Ash” is me confronting the idea that she was even gone, which still to this day, 2 years later, is still a staggering thought.
 
I didn’t have any second thoughts about them being published, nor did I about writing them—I just needed to do it. For the collection, I did go through and change the names, as in the original version of “To Wallow in Ash,” which can be found in Strange Behaviors: An Anthology of Absolute Luridity—published by NihilismRevised who published my collection—the names were all real. When I was going through it for the book, I was like, ‘This is a bit much…’ and I hadn’t even remembered that I didn’t change the names, so I added that additional layer of fictionalization and changed the names, as that did give me pause.
 
That story, the collection’s title story, is difficult to read. I can’t even imagine what it must’ve been like to write it. It reads less like a story and more like a confessional. It’s in the first person, it’s conversational, it features a character with a name that is still very close to your wife’s real name, and it includes real details from her life. The line between fiction and reality becomes very, very blurry. That blurriness gives the piece a lot of its power, but even still I have to ask: Aside from the obvious, how much of it is true? Or at least, how much of those thoughts and ideas went through your head back then, beyond the context of them being elements of a story?
 
It’s funny because a fellow widow friend reached out to me after she read it when it came out in the Strange Behaviors anthology and was like, “So…what did she taste like?” which really made me question everything, haha. Like, are there a bunch of people out there who think this is 100% real? Because I didn’t eat my wife’s ashes, even though a part of me wanted to.
 
So the surrounding details are mostly all true: her death, aspects of our relationship, some of the specifics I bring up - like the conversation about the couple who ate each other’s fingers was an actual conversation we had and how we each feel about it in the story is how we both felt about it in reality. The petite-cannibalism aspect is fiction, obviously. As I wrote that day 16, anything that’s projecting into the future obviously didn’t happen. I was trying to figure out what staying alive was going to look like, as the suicidal ideation was really starting to creep in those first couple of months. That story gave me an opportunity to write a future. Not a great future. Still a future of oblivion, but a different kind of oblivion.
 
But the thought of consuming her did cross my mind, in a weird way. My brain, in trying to wrap itself around her death, tried to come up with every-single-thing it could think of to keep her here, to keep her close. That was one of the weirder ones.
 
 
For those closest to you, the people who know you personally and who knew Mo, what have their reactions been like upon reading these stories?
 
I know that they have made a lot of our friends and family cry, which makes me feel both good and bad. It’s an odd situation. The first year I went to KillerCon—in 2018—the legendary Joe R. Lansdale, who is a huge writing influence of mine, said, “Write like everyone you know is dead.” I really needed to hear that at that moment. I hope people who knew her, who loved her, find value or catharsis or something in the stories I’ve written, but I also need to remember that it isn’t about them; that it isn’t for them. These stories are my way of processing and if I spent time thinking about how other people will react to them, I don’t think I’d be able to write them. This was especially true for the final story in the collection. That one hurt so much to write but I needed to get it out and I honestly still don’t know how I feel about other people reading it, especially those who knew Mo. But I couldn’t not write it.
 
Even with the intensely personal and therapeutic nature of these stories, is there anything you would you like your readers, total strangers, to take away from To Wallow in Ash & Other Sorrows?
 
One of the things I realized while making the TOC for the book was that I hope, if nothing else, this collection can help at least one person who is going through big loss know that they aren’t alone. As for anything else, I’ll be happy if it resonates with people on that emotional level. If I’m able to express my experience through fiction and have it touch people then what I am experiencing is somehow more real, as I no longer carry the pain alone—I’ve now given a little bit of it to the reader. My pain is now shared and I, in some way, have a little less of it.
 
Of the stories included in the collection, all but two were written after Mo’s death, is that correct? The ones that weren’t, it says in your introduction that you included those because Mo liked them. What has it been liking going back and reading those older works and comparing them to your more recent ones? Can you see the difference? Can you see the commonalities?
 
Yes, “The Prince of Mars” and “The Verdant Holocaust” were already written and published in anthologies before she died.
 
The one major thing I’ve noticed is that while they were both absolutely written under totally different circumstances, they were still written by me. I’m sure that’s a weird thing to say, but I guess I mean that while widowerhood has changed me in a lot of ways, I’m still the same person, which is easy to forget at times. They don’t carry the same weight as the others do, but I was shocked to find that there are still common themes. “The Prince of Mars” is very much about loss. And, in its own way, “The Verdant Holocaust” is too, though more about the loss of friendship than loss via death.
 
It’s fairly apparent how your stories from late 2017 and after are to varying degrees autobiographical. But those other two stories, do you feel there’s any elements of autobiography in those as well? Was that an element that was always in your writing or is it something that has only become integral in these last few years? Is it something important to you going forward?
 
There is some autobiography in all my work, to varying degrees for sure. “The Verdant Holocaust” being kind of about the death of a friendship is absolutely based on an experience I had, though obviously a lot else is different. The religious/cult aspect as well is an exaggerated riff on reality. I grew up in a pretty extreme Pentecostal Christian environment, so anytime I include religion in my work it is me trying to come to terms and deal with issues from that aspect of my childhood.
 
I think the biographical aspect is something I’ve always leaned on, at least a little. Small details from my life or experiences I’ve had always seem to worm their way into the stories, and I think I’ll always do that.
 
I did reach a point earlier in the year where I realized I had written a few stories that open with the burial of an urn by a river. Something I’ve now done. So it is a goal of mine to push away from telling variations of my own story over and over again. But the biographical element will likely always be a factor in my work, even if it isn’t obvious to the reader.
 
On the subject of those two stories, one was written for a Misfits tribute anthology and the other for a William S. Burroughs tribute anthology. Your press, Weirdpunk Books got its start with a GG Allin tribute anthology and most recently released a David Cronenberg tribute anthology. I have three questions: 1. Why all the tributes? 2. What do you feel is the most important thing when writing a tribute story or putting together an anthology? 3. The Misfits. Burroughs. Allin. Cronenberg. What is it about these creators that connects with you so strongly that you wanted to pay tribute? How do you feel they’ve influenced you?
 
Haha. The first two Weirdpunk Books tributes were Emma’s idea and I was l just all on board because they were brilliant concepts. The WSB tribute was just an open subs call that I saw and knew I had to tackle as he was an extremely early influence on me as a reader and budding writer back when I was like 14.
 
Things to keep in mind when writing for an anthology is making sure you have a fresh take on the ideas the subject presents. There are gonna be several people who write stories with the most basic understandings of the subjects and their work, and those writers are going to be doing the most obvious takes on them. Try to dig into the details and mine from there.
 
The Misfits are just fucking awesome and Emma had a brilliant idea with that anthology. I love their classic stuff and it’s so fun and surreal that getting to work on that was kind of a dream-I-didn’t-know-I-had come true.
 
With Allin, I’m not a fan, haha. He’s never resonated with me on any real level other than a mild interest in folks who take things to stupid extremes. But I also can’t deny how shitty of a person he was. The power of that book, I think, is how we approached the concept. The idea that he, as a person, wasn’t right for our reality, but what reality would he make sense in and let writers figure that out. That idea made working on that a lot of fun, even for someone who doesn’t like him—which was a lot of the contributors, haha.
 
Like I mentioned above, William S. Burroughs was a big early influence on me, and I knew I’d be mad at myself if I didn’t try to write something in tribute to him. His work is just so cryptic and interesting. That story, “The Prince of Mars,” is a mashup of WS Burroughs and Edgar Rice Burroughs where I put Bill Lee on Mars, so I got to blend a love of his words and play with strange concepts, but also put it within a sort of pulpy context which was so fun to write. It was strange how easily his way of writing just kind of poured out of me, like that bizarre shit is somewhere in my writing DNA from having read so much of him at such a young age. I had a blast with that one.
 
The Cronenberg anthology was something Brendan and I came up with after having known each other for only a few hours. It was my first BizarroCon and we were talking themed anthologies, Cameron Pierce having recently just put out the David Lynch anthology. We were wondering why no one had done Cronenberg yet, both being massive fans, and decided that we would eventually do it, if no one beat us to the punch. Which I’m still shocked didn’t happen.
 
Another project you recently finished was a successful Kickstarter campaign you put together for the purposes of finishing a set of tarot cards Mo had been working on but never managed to complete. Can you give a little background on that and maybe share what the experience running that campaign was like?
 
For sure. Mo was a tattoo artist and so she spent a lot of her time drawing tattoos at home for the next day, which made it harder for her to find time for personal art. She would try to find reasons to do personal stuff here and there, like specific art shows and whatnot. She had the idea to do a tarot deck as a long project, which was already a big passion of hers, and she fit in doing that whenever she had time. When she died, she had finished the Major Arcana and was into the 2s on the Minor. Several of us closest to her knew it couldn’t sit as an unfinished project, so we gathered about 40 artists to help finish what she had started. Luckily, she had made notes about how she wanted everything to be. It took about a year and a half, as the couple of us heading it up were having a difficult time with the emotional toll of making this project happen. My sister got involved to basically be the project organizer and she got us back on track.
 
The Kickstarter campaign was incredibly emotional, as was the whole process, but seeing it hit that funding goal, and knowing that these decks are going to be a reality, has been an amazing experience. I can’t wait to hold them. She would be so happy.
 
Since the campaign is over, of course the backers will be getting tarot decks. Beyond that, though, do you have any plans to make any decks available to those might have missed out on the campaign? If so, when might that be possible and how best can those interested get in contact with you?
 
With the Kickstarter over, we are going to have some decks leftover. We had to buy a minimum amount from the printer and didn’t hit that, so if you missed out, you’ll still be able to get one! I don’t have them on the site quite yet—I’ll try to get them up for preorder this week!—but they will be available on the Weirdpunk Books webstore: https://weirdpunkbooks.square.site/
 
Between the Kickstarter campaign and the release of your debut fiction collection, this has been a very busy few months for you. With the end of 2019 just over the horizon, what’s next? Anything in the works at Weirdpunk or in your personal writing endeavors?
 
Yeah, it has been fucking exhausting, haha. LAZERMALL just got on preorder, too, and that’ll be out soon. I have a story in Breaking Bizarro which also just came out. It has been a lot at once. I have stories in two other Filthy Loot projects, which I hope will be out sooner than later. I have a story in Planet X Publications’ Strange Stories of the Sea, which should be out any day now.
 
I have the small-creature horror novella that I am currently shopping around. I’d love to see that get on a 2020 release schedule. I just had an awesome publisher reach out, so here’s hoping that they’ll take it!
 
I wrote a story a month the first half of the year, and the latter half has all been working on longer pieces, so I’m working on a couple of things at the moment, which I will hopefully have done before the year is up. Brendan and I are also going to spend the winter working on a collaborative novel, so we’ll see how that goes as it’s new territory for both of us. On top of already being close friends, working together on The New Flesh has just been such a blast that we figured we should try something bigger.
 
One of those other projects I’m in the midst of is a memoir about grief/widowerhood that CLASH Books is putting out. It has easily been the hardest thing I’ve ever written and is taking me so long to write (sorry Leza and Christoph!) but I’m trying to get the rough-draft done by the end of the year.
 
As for Weirdpunk Books, I’m not sure yet if I’m going to do a 2020 anthology, as that collaborative novel will kind of take up the time I would have spent on an anthology. But we are releasing our first novella. Jo Quenell, who is in LAZERMALL and Zombie Punks Fuck Off, wrote this amazing novella and asked me to look at it for feedback—we often read each other’s work and give notes—and I loved it so much I begged them to let me publish it. It’s called The Mud Ballad and I’m so fucking excited to be releasing their debut novella. That’ll be out either later 2019 or early 2020, we’re still hashing some details out right now. I’ll likely try to publish another novella or two for the press in 2020. It’s a new direction, but I think it’s time to grow what Weirdpunk is doing.
 
Finally, I just wanted to say thank you again for taking the time to speak with The Ginger Nuts of Horror. Is there anything else that you would like to say or that you want people to know?
 
Thank you so much for taking the time to interview me! I so fucking appreciate it. I don’t think I have anything else to add other than that I’d love to see more stuff from you in the world, William! Put more stuff out! Cheers!!

​Before David Pinner became a full-time writer, he was trained at R.A.D.A., and he has acted in many stage and television plays.

The cult movie, THE WICKERMAN, is based on his 1967 novel, RITUAL, (Hutchinson/Arrow), which was re-published in 2011 by Finders Keepers and Endeavour.
In 2014 the sequel to RITUAL; THE WICCA WOMAN was published by Endeavour.
His other novels; WITH MY BODY (Weidenfeld and Nicholson)
and THERE’LL ALWAYS BE AN ENGLAND (Anthony Blonde).
 
He has had several plays produced in London; FANGHORN, starring Glenda Jackson at the Fortune Theatre; LUCIFER’S FAIR, Arts Theatre.
THE POTSDAM QUARTET, with Clive Swift at Lyric Hammersmith, directed  by David Giles, and at the Lion Theatre, New York, directed by Jacques Levy; and at the Jermyn Street Theatre in 2013.
THE LAST ENGLISHMAN, with Kate O’Mara at the Orange Tree.
CARTOON, SHAKEBAG and AN EVENING WITH THE G.L.C. at the Soho Poly.
SINS OF THE MOTHER, Grace Theatre; LENIN IN LOVE with James Faulkner, New End Theatre, and OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND, Finborough Theatre. 
His other produced plays; THE TEDDY BEARS’ PICNIC, with Philip Madoc as Stalin at The Gateway Theatre, Chester; DICKON with Joseph O'Connor; THE DRUMS OF SNOW; HEREWARD THE WAKE ; SCREWBALL; REVELATIONS; SKIN DEEP;
ALL HALLOWS’ EVE  and MIDSUMMER.
 
 
Penguin Plays (New English Dramatists)  published his plays DICKON, FANGHORN and DRUMS OF SNOW.
 
Oberon Modern Playwrights have published his ‘Stalin Trilogy’ THE POTSDAM QUARTET, LENIN IN LOVE and THE TEDDY BEARS’ PICNIC;
his ‘Three Power Plays’ DRUMS OF SNOW, RICHELIEU and PRINCE OF TRAITORS;
his ‘Seasons’ Quartet’ REVELATIONS, MIDSUMMER, ALL HALLOWS’ EVE and LADY DAY;   his ‘Vampire Trilogy’ FANGHORN, EDRED THE VAMPYRE and LUCIFER'S FAIR;  his 4 one act plays ‘The Joy of Misery’ CARTOON, AN EVENING WITH THE G.LC., SHAKEBAG and SUCCUBUS; and OH, TO BE IN ENGLAND.
 
Imperial College Press have published his play about Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke; NEWTON’S HOOKE.
 
DROPPING OUT OF A SEA WEED SKY, his book of poem, is published Levellers Press.
 
Could you tell the readers a little bit about yourself?


I was an actor, but latterly I’ve spent most of my time writing plays, novels and poetry.

To get the ball rolling and get everyone relaxed, here is a hopefully lighthearted question to break the ice, which one of your characters would you least like to meet in real life and have them complain at you about they way you treated them in your work.


My thousand year old, Anglo Saxon bisexual vampire, who slept with Shakespeare but didn’t bite him.

Other than the horror genre, what else has been a major influence on your writing?
 
History and politics have been the biggest influence as I have written plays about Hereward the Wake, Oliver Cromwell, Cardinal Richelieu, Napoleon, Karl Marx, Lenin, Stalin and Mao Tse Tung – and unfortunately many of them created a great deal of real, mass horror!!
 
 
The term horror, especially when applied to fiction always carries such heavy connotations.  What’s your feeling on the term “horror” and what do you think we can do to break past these assumptions?.
 
I think we need to infuse all our works on horror with a great deal of mordant, draconian humour, which profitably lighten our darkness.   

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?
 
Climate change will prove to be the greatest of horrors.

Given the dark, violent and at times grotesque nature of the horror genre why do you think so many people enjoy reading it?
 
It allows them to live in the world of fearful imagination, but without having to suffer the consequences.
 
What, if anything, is currently missing from the horror genre?
 
My thousand-year-old vampire, Edred, who lives in a church and who love garlic, but he can’t die – even though he wants to!

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


I’m very aware of them so now I’m very careful what I write.

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

Clive |Barnes in the New York Post wrote about Stalin play, which is appropriately called THE TEDDY BEARS’ PICNIC; ‘David Pinner is a recording angel with a mean pen.’

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

Beginning a new work, but once I’m into it….

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

Not that I know of.

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

Yes, the sound of the name is very important.  My vampire, Edred is equally Ed-Dread.
 
Writing, is not a static process, how have you developed as a writer over the years?

Every new work is a leap in the dark, and then you learn how to fly.

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

My father said ‘You will only ever be a good as your technique, and when your technique is good enough, it won’t show.’

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


I have too many favourite children, so I can’t name them.

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

‘Ritual’ because it was the inspiration for the Cult movie, ‘The Wickerman’ and my Stalin play, ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’.

Can you tell us about your last book, and can you tell us about what you are working on next?
 
My last play was ‘EDRED THE VAMPYRE’ and I’m working on the screenplay of my novel, THE WICCA WOMAN’.

What was the last great book you read, and what was the last book that disappointed you?
 
‘The Brothers Karamazov’ by Dostoevsky was my favourite.