Your first novel, “The Harvest Bride”, was published by Headline in the UK in 1988. Fast forward twenty years and your third novel, “Dark Rain”, will see publication this autumn. It’s been a rocky ride seemingly based on the vagaries of the publishing world towards the horror genre. Why do you think horror is suddenly putting books back on the shelves – other than Stephen King of course? What’s changed publishers’ minds about the genre?
Writing for the professional markets rarely goes as smoothly as it appears from the outside. I know several well-known authors who’ve, in actuality, had far more ups and downs to their careers than most people realise. But yes, mine has been a distinctly patchy one so far. There was a second novel, “Night Feast”, a large one and -- unlike most of my books -- straightforward horror. But nil marketing and a truly awful cover sank that one with barely a trace. There was supposed to be a third in the late Nineties -- an even longer vampire novel called “Hot Blood” -- but Pan Macmillan cut their horror list and that never appeared. I’ve had some stand-alone novellas appear since then, of course, but that has been through independent publishers and we’ll get to that later. But to get to the nub of your question, I’m not convinced there’s been a complete resurgence in the horror genre yet. “Dark Rain” is not pure horror, despite having some strong elements of that. It’s more a blend of dark fantasy and supernatural thriller. And I very much doubt it will appear with ‘Horror’ stamped on its spine -- publishers are hardly ever, even Leisure, doing that as yet, favouring descriptions like ‘Suspense’ instead. Horror simply got a very bad rap in the Nineties. Firstly, too many bad books were rushed into production, all at the same time. Secondly, some writers pushed the ‘nasty’ envelope a little too far … I can distinctly remember having some conversations with people in the book business where they expressed shock at what was being published, kids being tortured, stuff like that. Let’s face it, repugnance is not the best of marketing strategies. But I think a steady diet, over the last few years, of successful horror movies and tv shows like ‘Supernatural’ have turned the editorial eye towards the genre again. Plenty of people are still interested in this stuff. They want to stretch their imagination beyond the mundane. I only hope that, as things improve, the writers and publishers don’t lose the plot again. I want to thrill and fascinate people and make them think, not make them sick, for heaven’s sake!
I’m interested to hear your opinion on how the genre has changed since your first novel was published. For example, do you think “The Harvest Bride” would be published nowadays – or, conversely, do you think you would have been able to sell “Dark Rain” in the late 80s? What are the main differences between the styles in those books and the way that you approach the genre nowadays?
I think I answered half of your question above. The genre has got much smaller, in mainstream publishing terms at least, and all the idiots who wrote nasty rubbish for the money have been consigned to the circle of Hell from whence they came, and a good thing too. I genuinely care about my work. I think that horror fiction can be, potentially at least, just as important as any other form of literature. Critics who casually dismiss it as trash are dismissing, amongst others, Mary Shelley, half the work of Edgar Allen Poe, ‘The Turn of the Screw’ … the list just goes on. Joyce Carol Oates, Paul Theroux, and Susan Hill have all written in this vein. Conversely, there was an editor in the Nineties -- no names -- who bounced “Hot Blood” on the grounds that it was ‘too well-written for a horror novel’. So not everyone agrees with my view of the genre’s potential worth. But I’m not sure I fully understand the second part of your question, as it relates to me at least. There are similarities between “The Harvest Bride” and “Dark Rain”. Both their central characters, for instance, are supernatural investigators to all intents and purposes, and there’s a slight touch of the noir to both books. You could swap them over, chronologically, without any real problem. Which doesn’t mean I haven’t progressed as a writer. But a good book is a good book, and ought to find a market any time. What has really changed about the genre is the way the independent presses, with their much smaller print runs, have published so much fiction that the big houses would simply consider not commercial enough. And that has been vastly to the benefit of the genre, reinforcing its essential worth, and expanding the boundaries as regards subject matter and theme. Bog-standard horror is no longer the norm, because of that. There’s so much terrific, inventive, intelligent fiction out there these days, mostly in the shape of novellas and short stories. Gary McMahon? Gary Fry? Stuart Young? Paul Finch? Adam Nevill? That’s just to name a few, I’m leaving dozens out -- but we might have never heard of these excellent writers if it weren’t for the independent presses.
Perhaps you can tell us a little about “Dark Rain”. I understand this book, and the follow-up, will both be set in the imaginary town of Raine’s Landing, Massachusetts. When writing “Dark Rain” did you envisage it as a place to feed two novels, or was it a case that the publisher read it and wanted more work set in the same place? Is it a standalone book or will the story follow through into the next one?
I have always -- and I’m glad to say my editor agrees -- regarded these two books as the beginning of a series. The second novel is going to be called “Shadow Town”, by the way, and was contracted sight unseen, which seems to indicate that Eos trust me. (ANDREW, I’M GOING TO TAKE IN THE FIRST PART OF QUESTION 4 HERE). Raine’s Landing is, on the surface, a perfectly ordinary medium-sized provincial New England town. One snag, though. Back in 1692, some famous witchcraft trials took place in another Massachusetts town called Salem. As we all know, nineteen innocent people went to the gallows because of that. The premise of the book is based on what you don’t know -- namely, there were real witches in Salem. Clever and prescient, they saw the trials coming and decamped to Raine’s Landing. They married into the local population, choosing the wealthier families where possible. And the Landing has been a pretty strange place ever since. There’s also the matter of a curse on the whole town … but I’m not going into that in too much detail. Buy the book. Wow, that was a subtle plug!
So, what’s so weird about Raine’s Landing? I know a lot of your work is based upon places you’ve been. Is Raine’s Landing real or imaginary?
The town itself is entirely imaginary, but people who are familiar with my work -- and I’ve set fiction in locations all over the world -- will realise that I know of what I write. I’ve been to New England quite a few times. And I’ve stayed in provincial towns all over the States -- Maryland, Arizona, you name it. One of my oldest friends lives, these days, in Nyack, New York, and I usually drop in on him when I am visiting NYC. So it’s hardly like I’m writing off the top of my head. The best research, in my opinion, is done in life, not books.
How do you plan to develop this in the second novel? Will there be a third? How long have the books taken to write?
The real point of the later novels is, beyond the individual story in each book, there is a bigger picture, a Grand Subplot if you like. Raine’s Landing has become the focus for a kind of mystical convergence, and the series will end when it all comes to a head. I’m being vague here, and I realise that. But I honestly don’t want to give too much away. Would you like me to be unsubtle again? The first book took me about a year to write, incidentally.
Between 1988 and 2008 you weren’t sitting still, of course. You’re a regular face at conventions, and have had a large number of short stories published during that period. Do you think that in the absence of major publishing interest it has been the small presses which have kept horror alive for the last twenty years? How important were those small press sales to you as a writer? Which of your short stories is your favourite and why?
I did sit still for a few of those years, actually. I just got exhausted with the horror slump and stopped writing for a while. But fortunately or otherwise, it’s in my blood, and I’d never stop forever. When I came back and started getting involved in the scene again, it was at the start of this decade, and the British independent presses were bursting out all over the place. In fact, Andrew, I distinctly remember you showing me the first two Elastic Press books, in a smoky pub -- ah, those were the days -- in Norwich. You’ve published one collection of mine. Gray Friar is bringing out another one this year. I’ve had four novellas published by the indies, two of them recently with Pendragon. So yes, it’s been massively of help to every writer in the genre. Even authors like Mike Marshall Smith, who’ve had bestsellers with the big houses, still turn to the indies when they want to publish less commercial work. So it’s not just the case that the independent publishers have provided markets. They’ve provided writers with the opportunity to expand their creative horizons. In terms of short stories, I was still selling to mass market anthologies the first few years of the Noughties, But even that has practically dried up, so thank God for the likes of Cemetery Dance and Black Static. Favourite stories? “Postcards from Terri” -- a novella really, but whatever -- is one, because it’s personal and it’s funny and it sprang so fully-formed from my imagination … I just sat down and started to write the thing one day, with no pre-planning whatsoever. Actual shorts? My very favourite has yet to see print. It’s called “Birchiam Pier”, is coming out in an American antho -- I’ve been asked by the publishers not to say which one yet -- and is, I think, a pretty serious tale about a real modern issue. Oh, and there’s a tale called “The Crows” due out from Midnight Street that will terrify the crap out of everyone although, again, its theme is serious. Deadly serious, in fact. You might have guessed by now, that I prefer to look towards the future than the past. So, a past favourite? “Our Lady of the Shadows”, which first appeared in a Fontana Ghosts, and which Steve Jones recently reprinted in ‘Great Ghost Stories’. One critic opined that it blew every other story in the book away. Someone buy that man a drink.
Unlike fiction, horror films seemed to have survived the anti-horror brigade. Do you think this has made a difference to how publishers view horror? What are you own favourite horror films, both old and contemporary?
I wouldn’t get too complacent about that first statement. In the first place, recent films with a lot of violence against women -- ‘Hostel’, for instance -- started to provoke a backlash, although thankfully that blew over. Second, a few things have been said on political platforms recently that have left me convinced this government will try to push more censorship through if it gets a fourth term. I’m not saying Vote Cameron, for heaven’s sake. I’m just saying you need to watch these guys. Just look at their recent legislation on internet downloads, how vague and badly thought through it is. This is a government that thinks its job is to ‘do’ something about everything. My favourite movies, strangely, occupy the opposite ends of the horror prism. So I like subtle movies and ones that concentrate on character, ranging from Lewton’s ‘Cat People’ to Jack Nicholson in ‘Wolf’. But then I also like totally unsubtle movies that cut straight to the chase. ‘Pitch Black’, ‘The Hitcher’ -- the original, not the remake -- and ‘The Hills Have Eyes’. I think this is called ‘having a split personality’.
Horror exists at the heart of every human of course, whether a fear or pain or loss or death. What is it about the horror genre that appeals to you?
If your mind works in fantastic ways, then you have basically three options. You can write straight fantasy, Epic Fantasy, populated by characters with impossible names. I’ve no interest whatever in that. You can write science fiction, and did write some in my early years, but lost most of my interest in it. Option Three? The thing about a horror story is, wherever it might finish up, it begins in the real world, with normal settings, normal characters. People just living their everyday lives until something goes terribly amiss. And that’s what most appeals. Horror, to me, is emblematic of how life can suddenly go very badly wrong. I’ve described it, in the past, as ‘somebody having something happen to them that they definitely weren’t expecting when they woke up that morning’. Most of the Jews who were taken to the death camps genuinely thought that they were only being relocated. Did a single person, riding the elevators to the upper storeys of the World Trade Centre, have the faintest idea what was going to happen? That’s why horror has such potential as important fiction. I’m not saying I don’t set out to merely entertain sometimes -- I do, and make no apologies for that. But that is the principal reason why I write it.
Finally, if it is the case that horror is back on the bookstore menu what do you think is the longevity of that? Is there a future for horror as we know it?
All forms of genre fiction -- sf, mysteries -- go through cycles, but horror has definitely suffered the worst. How long this upward trend goes on depends on both the writers and the publishers. We need good writers who are serious about their work, and the indy presses have turned out plenty of those. Then we need top quality editors -- like mine at Eos, for instance -- who are more interested in nurturing them than in making a fast buck. If we can keep the hacks out of the marketplace, then we ought to be fine. I look forward to the day when an editor tells me ‘Why, this book is so well-written … and I wouldn’t expect any less from a horror novel!’
