Interview _ David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson

David Wilkinson lives in Ashby de la Zouch and works as the Midlands Regional Officer for the Institute of Physics.

His debut novel, We Bleed the Same (Inspired Quill, 2014) was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award 2015.

In this interview, David Wilkinson talks about his concerns as a writer.

When did you start writing?

I have been making up stories set in my fictional “universe” since I was about five. These have been refined over the years until I had novel plots set in my mind. I would talk extensively to my wife about them and she kept saying I should try writing them out. Then a confluence of events occurred. First I got paid to write an article in a science magazine. Then I heard a successful playwright interviewed on BBC Radio 4 who used to be a girl in my English GCSE class, giving feelings of “well, if she can do it...” But mostly it was my wife just telling me to shut up and get on with it, buying me a course at the Leicester Writing School for my birthday in the process. 14th September 2011, the day after the first workshop, at around about lunchtime, was when I started writing!

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

It would firmly sit on the science fiction shelf, some would say space opera. However, the books are totally plot and character driven. It is about interesting people interacting with each other in a dysfunctional society that just happens to span half the galaxy.

The work is certainly adult and has plenty in it for the science fiction fan. However, several non-sci-fi fans who have read it, or parts of it, find themselves enjoying it too. It has a political thrust and also an undercurrent of feminism, so it would be nice to get into broader markets. As for why – I am just writing what I know and love.

Which authors influenced you most?

The very first science fiction books I read as a child were Spaceship Medic by Harry Harrison and Wheelie in the Stars by Nicholas Fisk.

There's a tiny homage to Medic in my first novel; I wonder if anyone can spot it.

As I got older I ploughed into most of Asimov and, like so many others, I owe future city building to the Caves of Steel.

Dystopias had a strong impact – From Huxley’s Brave New World to Orwell’s 1984.

The one standout novel that had the most influence on me was The Mote in God’s Eye by Niven and Pournelle. It really brought home to me the truth that good Science Fiction is about our contemporary world. I was also impressed by their amalgam of current and future tech. It really brought characters to the fore and had the power of story where characters were neither entirely good nor entirely bad.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I’m not a fan of large swathes of description. I don’t enjoy reading it and I am not good at writing it (as evidenced by my cold readers, editors and anyone else who has ever got near an unedited version of my work). As a result I have learned about writing detail.

If you write about one of your characters tracing greasy outlines on the outside of their mug, you don’t have to write a long description of the squalor of the canteen they are sitting in. It also keeps the reader close to the action.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

The biggest challenges are my everyday life. I have two children under eight and a full time job. I am also learning to play a concerto. Writing just fills in the odd free moment. I also write on trains – that’s where I am doing this interview now.

Do you write every day?

Taking into account the previous question, the writing experience is usually the same. I sit down and spend about 10 minutes reading over what has come before, ostensibly to get into the flow but really just to put off the moment of beginning.

Once I start, the first 15-20 minutes are a real struggle and on about a quarter of attempts, I stop in this time. Then, twenty minutes in, something magical happens and I hit the zone. Without apparent effort I will reel out about 750-800 words of good material. Then I feel tired and notice that an hour has passed since I sat down.

This varies sometimes.

In particularly compelling chapters I’ll be able to keep going and get down 2,000-2,500 words in a two-hour sitting.

As I approached the end of my last novel, I went into something of a frenzy, writing whole chapters in about an hour or so. In this way I wrote the last ten chapters (20,000 words) in less than a week. That bit needed a lot of editing!

How long did it take you to write We Bleed the Same?

I started writing We Bleed the Same in the novel workshop series my wife bought me. At that time it was the only fiction I had ever written. The publisher Inspired Quill gave me a contract and We Bleed the Same came out in July 2014.

It took almost exactly a year to complete the first draft. Afterwards there was about three months of personal editing. My cold readers then had it for a month before I spent another two months editing again. This is when I started sending it to agents.

David Wilkinson's debut novel, We Bleed the Same (Inspired Quill, 2014) was shortlisted for the East Midlands Book Award 2015.

How did you chose a publisher for the book?

Well, primarily Inspired Quill was the one that offered me a contract. They are a small, new publisher and they are operating as a social enterprise, putting income back into social programmes. They were very up front about the realities of signing with a young, small publisher – even presenting me with a list of pros and cons of their own. The main con is that they don’t have a large advertising budget. The pros include a more collegiate approach to editing, a personal relationship with the boss and a good deal on royalties.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult? Why do you think this was so? And, how did you deal with these challenges?

Just keeping going. Getting the words down has always been my biggest irritation – I am much happier developing plot. I just have to hold my nose and get on with it.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

Plotting. I do it entirely in my head and write almost no notes. This lets me do it in the shower, driving the car or walking the dogs. It is always there, ticking away in the back of my mind and the wonderful thing is when revelatory story lines spring into my mind. At those moments I stop, smile and sometimes do a fist pump.

What sets We Bleed the Same apart from other things you've written?

Everything else I have written has been factual and in the field of forensic physics.

Are there any similarities?

I don’t like breaking the laws of physics – there is no artificial gravity or inertial dampening. Where I have had to extend science, I have tried to provide adequate explanations.

What will your next book be about?

It is a detective story set in the same “universe”.

In my first novel a character is reading a detective story set in a city they visit. It is this book, Pilakin: Falling Rubble, that I am writing. It is essentially SciFi Noir.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Getting a publisher on my first piece of fiction.

[Interview_2] Masimba Musodza

In an earlier interview, Zimbabwean writer Masimba Musodza talked about the factors that led him to start writing.

His books include The Man who turned into a Rastafarian (Diggory Press, 2007), Uriah’s Vengeance (Lion Press Ltd, 2009) and the Shona science fiction novel, MunaHacha Maive Nei? (Kindle Edition, 2011).

His work has also been featured in African Roar (Storytime, 2010), an anthology of contemporary African fiction.

Masimba Musodza talks about his latest novel:

Do you write everyday?

Yep!

Normally I have these ideas swirling in my head. Then, by around midnight, they have taken shape and I just start working. Or, if I have a client for a script, I just try and meet the deadline!

Usually, I have the story or the chapter all written in my head when I sit down at my PC. I will often have about three windows minimised and I just work on the one that wants to be worked on.

I know it is the popular perception of Rastafarians, but I would like to state categorically that I do not smoke weed for inspiration! Caffeine is my drug of choice, so in between breaks I will be downing a cup of tea with soya milk. I work in bursts of about two hours.

How many books have you written so far?

My first book was The Man who turned into a Rastafarian, Diggory Press, 2007. It was an anthology of short stories about being a Rastafarian young man in Zimbabwe. Diggory Press folded up recently, but I republished the title after so many people sent in enquiries. Seems to have become something of a modern classic in the Rastafarian community.

In 2009, I had the first of the Dread Eye Detective Agency novels, Uriah’s Vengeance, Lion Press Ltd. Chenai “Ce-Ce” Chisango and her brother Farai are a pair of sibling private investigators in Chitungwiza. Two more titles in the series are scheduled for publication.

In between all that, I have appeared in African Roar, an anthology of African fiction edited by compatriots Ivor Hartmann and Emmanuel Sigauke. A second anthology is in the offing, and I contribute another of my horror stories in it.

How would you describe your latest book, MunaHacha Maive Nei??

MunaHacha Maive Nei? depicts a scenario where an American corporation contrives with corrupt Zimbabwean officials to conduct illegal bio-technology experiments as part of a grander plot to usurp food security from whole nations. Chemicals begin to seep in to the eco-system, and mutated creatures now roam the countryside.

Part of the significance of this book is that it is the first science-fiction novel in ChiShona, and overturns the popular perception that you can’t write 'complicated stuff' in the language.

How long did it take you to write the novel?

Hard to say, really. The original inspiration is from the time when we used to spend school holidays in my mother’s ancestral village in Mutungagore in the mid or late 80s. Much of the novel is set in a fictional area near Mutungagore and the small town of Nyazura.

Further inspiration came from my stay in Chitungwiza in the late 90s, when the open spaces would flood due to siltation of the streams and people would catch catfish. Some of the fish were quite big, and I would wonder what would happen if they grew so big as to become predators. Some of the boys I saw catch the fish would not be safe from them!

And then, I read over the last few years about how corporations were getting land concessions all over Africa. Some analysts fear that food security is set to be a major geopolitical tool of the near future, enjoying the status that oil has today. And this is what science fiction is essentially about ... while the sci-fi writer points to the future, he or she highlights the fears we have of the future. I am bringing this important fact about science fiction because many people who have read the book are only seeing CIO assassins and journalists who live in fear of soldiers and are asking me if my book is about the politics of Zimbabwe. It is not. It is about how the politics of Zimbabwe could be exploited by a greedy multi-national corporation to advance technological developments that many people around the world are apprehensive about. It is also about how we can apply science and technology to identify problems and solutions effectively. It is about enquiring and initiative.

MunaHacha Maive Nei? was published on June 6, 2011 by amazon Kindle here in the UK, the US and Germany. It is the first novel in ChiShona to be listed on amazon Kindle.

How did you chose a publisher for the book?

I chose amazon Kindle because the device is becoming quite popular here in England and I thought it would be nice if we had Zimbabwean content in this new media.

The print edition is coming out through Lion Press Ltd of Coventry, which specialises in Zimbabwean literature. I have a long-standing relationship with Lion Press Ltd. I don’t know if I am their best-selling author, but they can’t deny that I am the most prolific!

What advantages and/or disadvantages has this presented?

Amazon Kindle delivers not only to the Kindle device, but also to PCs and mobile phones. It is the best medium for the 3G generation. Most of the Zimbabweans who live in countries where access to new media is widespread may not go to libraries much, but they have the phones and the PCs.

One disadvantage is that it will not reach a wider readership back home. I just shrug resignedly at the situation ... it is not of my making. Lion Press is making efforts to break into Zimbabwe, but I am only the author. Let someone else worry about selling and distributing!

Obviously, I want a fat royalty cheque any time soon, but the publisher wants to see profits too, so let them do the hard work in that department, I’ve done mine these last few months!

Another drawback is that in the UK, VAT is charged on ebooks (but not on print books) which has pushed the price up somewhat. So far, no one has complained that the price is too high, which rubbishes the popular belief that Zimbabweans believe that content that is created for them should be really cheap if they are to even take an interest. There are many Zimbabweans out there who value their culture and will spend money on it, for which on behalf of all our artistes, I say Tinotenda/Siyabonga!

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you find most difficult?

Organising chapters.

The book is over 70,000 words. Some parts wander and meander like the River Hacha upstream, and some slow to a gentle ebb. How do you organise that into chapters each with a beginning, middle and end?

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

How it all ties together, because when I started to write, I had no idea how it was going to end!

What sets MunaHacha Maive Nei? apart from other things you've written?

It is my first published work in ChiShona. And even though one of the major character is a Rastafarian, it is not a book about Rastafarians at all.

I think it is similar to other things I have written in how I try to wrap poignant issues around a gripping story, which is what I try to accomplish with all my writing. You know, keep someone reading while at the same time get them thinking without actually lecturing them or griping about how bad things are.

What will your next book be about?

I have the Dread Eye Detective Agency novels lined up. There is an anthology, including some of the short stories I have published on the Dread Eye Detective Agency on Facebook but that is going to be an ebook.

Then there is the much awaited To Russia, With OneLove and a three-novel omnibus imaginatively called The First Dread Eye Detective Agency Omnibus. Fans of the page on Facebook may have already read and enjoyed the draft of one of these novels.

I am also working on two horror novels, one in English and one in ChiShona. The English one is called Cursed Shall be Thy Kine. It blends the folk beliefs of my native Zimbabwe and my new home, Yorkshire, using horror as a metaphor for issues of identity, belonging and immigration. The title is inspired by the phenomenon known as cattle mutilation. I am working on this one under the mentorship of Writers’ Block NE, the organisation for writers and performers here in Middlesbrough, where I live now. The idea of the mentorship programme is to offer writers from North-East England a chance to attract the attention of the big publishing houses and agents in London.

I am pleased that despite having lived in the area for about a year now, I am able to make a contribution to its culture.

The ChiShona novel is called Zizi reRima, and once again I delve into comparative mythology and the supernatural to highlight the issues of sexual abuse in Zimbabwe and how the justice system can sometimes fail victims. Once again, I break new ground here by writing a bone-chiller in ChiShona.

Related articles:

• Book Fair blitz on local languages, By Chemist Mafuba, The Herald, August 1, 2011
• Mermaids and Toxic Waste: The First Science Fiction Novel Published in Zimbabwe’s Native Language, By Charlie Jane Anders, io9, June 21, 2011
• Masimba Musodza [Interview], Conversations with Writers, June 20, 2009

[Interview: 2 of 2] M. A. Walters

In an earlier interview, science fiction, horror novelist and short story writer, M. A. Walters talked about his collection of short stories, A Flourish of Damage and other Tales (Sonar4 Publications, 2010).

M. A. Walters now talks about the influences he draws on as a writer:

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

I would say it’s a mix. I think I jump across genre lines pretty freely. I think most of my current work is a combination of science fiction, horror, and speculative fiction.

I kind of have to think the writer Nina M. Osier for that. She writes in the sci-fi genre and seemed to think it might be a good fit for me. She is a good teacher. Also, she was subtle. I felt it was OK to try on the genre and it was a great fit.

Who is your target audience?

I try and be inclusive on purpose. For example, I try and write strong, interesting and flawed characters that will appeal to many personalities.

I try and hook the reader and keep them moving. I want them both entertained and challenged.

People have told me that I write strong and interesting women. Which is funny to me because women are still a mystery to me. I thought it a stupid notion to cut out half the world’s population by only writing for men. For example, women are quickly discovering science fiction today. They are joining the sciences and I think they offer some intuitive wisdom even there in the hard sciences. They have been solidly in the horror realm for a good while, since what, Mary Shelley, which is horror but also an early sci-fi theme.

I hope my work appeals across genres and across gender. For example, Jian, the lead character in the first book of the Minders series is a very strong, powerful and complex women. She really ended up being the lead. I did not plan it that way at all. She took over but made the book better for doing so.

Of course, the same applies for the male characters. I mention women because I’ve gone out of my way to include them in the sf genre by looking at them as potential readers.

If you just want a good adventure story, I think you will want to give my work a look. If you are a horror, sf, or speculative reader, the same also.

I attempt to be inclusive. I think, even a mystery or thriller reader would enjoy some of my work. At least I’d like to think so.

Which authors influenced you most?

The truth is ... and this is what I think makes my work a bit unique ... a lot of my influences come from outside my genre.

I see the influence of some surrealistic poets, for one, in the way I string sentences together and sometimes unusual word combinations and the way I piece environment together.

For me, environment is the biggest character in a story. I learned that from F. Herbert.

As for the others, these are people I’ve not read for a long time but the poetry and internal world is still there. Writers like Paul Bowels, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Pablo Neruda. They all wrote the interior world very well. At the same time, their eyes were piercing, in the awake sense. You could see through their eyes, in new ways, the ordinary world.

It’s strange, but there is poetry in every thing if seen very clearly. There are violent explosive episodes in my work, but there is an odd poetry and beauty there also. Perhaps because so much is at stake in those moments. I want the reader to feel that. I want them to be tense and uncomfortable.

There is a fight scene in the "Rocks Beneath" and there is so much at stake in that moment, the whole book has been driving you there as the tension mounts. You are so invested in the character by that time and more than just the life of those two individuals is at stake. After a friend read that passage, he said he was exhausted and that he hated one of the characters. Actually hated them.

That meant I had succeeded in my venture.

It was the biggest compliment I’ve received thus far.

The point is, I really did not discover my genre until about 10 years ago. Friends tried to get me to read the Ring Series, Tolkien’s work. I said, "Isn’t that for kids, like teen stories?"

One day, I picked it up and was completely pulled in, completely sucked in and I never looked back. That’s a good point on horror writing, I think.

Throughout Tolkien’s work you see the influences that haunted him from World War I: the trench warfare is there; the deep friendships and the harshness; the senseless death ... I’ve heard others say this also. I think it is true and a very strong feature of his work.

From there I discovered Frank Herbert’s Dune, and later the work that continued through Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson.

Lovecraft is also there in some work. Like in "After the Fall, the Remnant". Which is outlined to continue and become a full novel, perhaps my next.

I think I need a break from the Minders.

Bradbury, he was a man so far ahead of his time. And he could be so nostalgic and sensitive, and yet far out front ahead of his era. And he still is!

I see some Bradbury in "Scraps of Time and Place".

Bradbury is like childhood, terrifying and wonderful at the same time. I’d like to think I capture a little of that from time to time. Stephen King is like this. He knows and understands childhood and the wild things in the closet and the shadows under the bed. He writes remarkable friendships, the ones we carry with us always, from those years.

S. M. Stirling is a contemporary writer I really enjoy. I can’t pen point a particular influence although I aspire towards his battle scenes. He can put those together better than anyone I’m aware of now.

When did you start writing?

When I was between 10 and 12 years old.

People, kids begin to look at the world around that age. Before that we are pretty focused on the self. Well, I began to look around and realized the world did not operate the way I was taught it was suppose to. That view then turns on the self and I realized that I made even less sense. So I began to order things on paper. Back then it was pen and paper and when pen hit paper it was somehow transforming and natural.

Getting published ... that has been a twisted path for me with many pitfalls and detours.

First, I put pen to paper then, sometime later, the thought of sharing arrived slowly.

Writing is a damned scary venture, isn’t it? Sharing what you have written, that’s not for the faint-hearted but, face it, we writers are basically faint-hearted. You can’t have that kind of nature and not be a bit thinned-skinned. It’s like a romantic venture, that moment you put it all on the line.

You eventually learn to tuck your ego away or so I hear -- but it’s raw and takes some courage always.

I started by letting a few people I trusted look at my work, but that was much later. I was in the process then of deciding this is what I want to do. I always keep returning to that.

I started as a poet, believe it or not. And I did publish in that genre in this anthology or that one right away. The poetry came much later when I was in college, as did the short stories ... I took those genres up seriously in my early 20’s. Before that is was snippets, patches of stories, a half poem, it was mostly journal type entries. But it began there.

Strangely and odd enough I was not heavy reader until college.

It was like a dormant part of me woke up and woke up at a full gallop. I’ve been catching up ever since.

It was an English teacher and I was terrified of him, anyone with sense was! First day of class there was like 37 people, mostly unknowing freshmen packed into his little class that had about 12 chairs.

We were spilled all over the floor and standing in corners.

He was a tall lean Scotsman with a big white beard and wore a little red beret and the same old brown wrinkled corduroy sport coat everyday. I think that coat was much older than I was.

We were all squirming and quietly asking each other, "What’s up?"

We knew this was not the norm.

He looked up and his eyes seemed to impale each of us. You knew there was no corner deep enough to hide in! In fact, we quickly learned not to sit in those corners anyway.

He quietly said, "If you are worried about having a seat don’t be. There will be plenty of seats soon enough. By the end of week there will be 12 to 15 of you left. Fewer of those will survive before to the end of semester."

Then he roared with the loudest belly laugh I’ve heard before or since. I once, many years later, heard that laugh in the back of a darkened theater and instantly said, "That is Mr. Moore." He was always Mr. to me even after we became friends. He was my first teacher in every sense of the word.

Well, Mr. Moore pointed to the door with his chin and said, "If you want to leave, now is a good time to do so because the door will soon be locked, as it will be every day the moment class begins. There are no latecomers here."

Those with good sense bolted for the door and he politely told them all goodbye and said thanks for coming.

Truth is, I think, I was too scared to leave.

Afterwards, I told my girlfriend of the time, "I can’t do this class. This is not for me."

She looked at me and said simply, "I think you have to if you want to write."

Well, long story made short, I survived the first week, and I survived the entire semester.

I took every class he offered, in fact.

I never walked in that room at ease, though. It was like a confrontation with a Zen master. There was the feeling that anything could happen in that room. Yet through all this, he was the most respectful person I have ever met.

He was not mean, ever. He was stern, and he was caring. But it was the kind of kindness that strips away falseness.

If you ever, and I did, say something glib or false you were ablaze in your seat instantly.

But it was always Mr. Walters, Ms. So-and-so. It was the first time most of us were treated as adults.

OK, so I did the bravest thing I think I had ever done up to that point. At mid-term, I quietly slipped a large envelope of probably 200 poems on his desk.

I was so frightened I could not talk. I just slipped it there on my rush to the door.

He never said a word about it.

I’m laughing here.

But the very last day of class, he said, "Mr. Walters, I believe this is yours."

I picked up the same envelope and neither of us said anything.

I thought, "Oh, crap, he did not even bother to look at them."

Lol.

I was mistaken.

I got home and realized every single poem was littered with red and blue ink. He had thoughtfully commented on each poem.

That was the beginning ... somehow.

Possibly related books:

,,

Related articles:

• M. A. Walters [Interview: 1 of 2], Conversations with Writers, June 8, 2010
• Yann Martel: in search of understanding, by Mick Brown, The Telegraph, June 1, 2010
• Ray Bradbury made me want to write, by Neil Gaiman, Times Online, May 21, 2010

[Interview: 1 of 2] M. A. Walters

Maine, New England resident, M. A. Walters is a science fiction, horror novelist and short story writer.

His work includes the collection of short stories, A Flourish of Damage and other Tales, which is available as an e-book from Sonar4 Publications.

In this interview, M. A. Walters talks about his writing:

How long did it take you to come up with A Flourish of Damage?

It took a year to knock the shorts out while working on two novels. Sonar4 is the publisher. They are small but vigorous with solid heads and work ethics behind them. They are smart. I’ve had a chance at a bigger house, but I trust these people and know they will promote me, and I think I have something to offer them also.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into the book?

Dealing with domestic violence and some of the darker sub-currents of our culture.

In a lot of the shorts in this collection I’m pocking around some uncomfortable patches and corners of my self. I got a little too close to the edge a couple times and pulled back. It’s hard not to become the thing we hate at least for moments, the darkness in the world.

When we rally against injustice, I discovered it’s far too easy to become that which we hate. Yet that quick recoil itself is what tells us we are different. The lead character in "Flourish" is all about that very fine line, and it was a challenge to me. How does she take back her life and maintain that humanity?

I’m something of a near pacifist by nature but there is something in me that respond vigorously to blatant abuse and injustice. It’s a deep part of my nature; it’s part of the furniture of my self. It’s not going anywhere, so I accommodate it. I just work with it.

Well, the part of me that is pacifistic and tolerant and who is really a live-and-let-live kind of personality can encounter wrath and rage in myself when the large attack the weak and those that can’t defend themselves.

I used to practice aikido and aikido is a positive paradigm in relating to this inner and outer conflict. But people there take that to one extreme or another also. It’s all peace and light or it’s brutal, either of those points of view is BS in my mind. What there is are circumstances and the response that is proper for that given time. Lock your self into either of those corners and you are in a dangerous place.

People don’t want to think, they want right and wrong answers. There are solid lines that should never be crossed, when crossed you have lost what makes you human and there’s nothing left worth fighting for at that point. Forget that and your culture or person is over, you just don’t realize that yet. I’m very serious on this point. Perhaps I’m just a moralist at heart; oh-well all good horror is moralistic in nature.

Which aspects of the work you put into the book did you enjoy most?

The writing itself, when it’s pouring through you and you don’t really feel like you are at the wheel, you are something of a watcher and there is something magical there, about that, for lack of a better word ... It’s the most rewarding thing I’ve ever encountered. It’s addictive.

What sets the book apart from other things you've written?

A couple of those stories are a bit too personal for my taste.

Maybe there is a little more of me in a couple stories in that collection than would normally be.

I was pushing the edge a few times there.

A Flourish of Damage and other Tales is similar to other things I have written because I returned to short story format, which was how I essentially saw myself in the past.

I went back to my roots.

Those stories were all written over the last year while I worked on the novels, they were like a breathing break for me.

The novel is an over-whelming experience for me. I like to do it but, frankly, it hurts.

What will your next book be about?

It’s either going to be finishing book two of the Minder series, tentatively titled The Culling, or I’m going to expand After the Fall the Remnant into a novel. I know where that’s going and I think its’ an interesting place. I’m excited to jump in those waters. It’s a very Lovecraft kind of tale, where something ancient and so very different from us suddenly jumps into the present.

We will also have the deal with our own dark-side there because the beings that show up look on us as simple resources, nothing more. It’s a coldness so deep it’s not coldness. That is much more frightening. It’s indifference. This is what we confront in the novel and I’m letting the human race off easily in this one. They will never be the same again, simple as that. The human race is done but evolution still proceeds from that point. Dormant things in the human also wake up; survival and chaos are also a different word for creation, right? I’m excited about this work.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Persistence ...

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

Mine and those around me also. I always had a strong sense of empathy and saw a good deal of suffering and, yes, that shaped me and it’s there in the work.

I also grew up on the wrong side of the track so to speak. Which is an education in and of itself.

One of my characters from the story, A Flourish of Damage, is a writer and says something like she bleeds all over the pages she writes, because she is hidden there, but hidden well, hopefully. The writer has to step out of the way for things to work and yet still be there.

Remember, at the beginning, I said I began writing at around 10.

I think a lot of us can’t always solve our problems with the world but we become god-like with the pen, don’t we? Some of the injustice and sand traps of the world get solved or at least framed in a different light on paper. It’s a way to deal, to more than deal, to transform something in our selves. At the same time, remember, it’s hopefully just a good story. You have to entertain, never forget that, or, you are doomed. You also can’t make everyone happy, so don’t try. That’s related to what I said above. Be inclusive but don’t try and please all. That’s a foolish venture. I’m young in the business of writing but that seems pretty apparent.

Do you write everyday?

I try to write something, maybe just a blog, even correspondence.

Health does not always allow this. There are many days I simply can’t, but it’s always there, the mind is constantly spinning stories even if I’m sick in bed. In fact, that’s when I tend to crash through difficult parts of a story or character, in that quiet dreamy realm when sick or exhausted. I’ve had crummy health my entire life, in the last few years it’s been much worse. I don’t venture far these days. Which is odd for me as I used to love to travel, to throw myself into strange places and sink or swim.

I ‘think’ it was Proust who also was like this. I read where he said if he had been born healthy he would never have been a writer. I think that might be true for me, I would probably be out hiking and expending energy physically. So, again, there is a positive even to this. I came back to writing from illness. So, I accept this.

I try and make up for it during a good spell. Some days I can’t work. Some I will be here for 12 hours straight. When I can I’m here and I work hard and long. When I can’t, I can’t. As soon as I sit here, it happens, the world recedes around me.

There is something shamanistic about writing. I don’t know what it is, but it’s there. I’m not a TV watcher. This is what I do when I can. I take a nap in the middle of the day then find myself here again if health permits. Ends with some reading and sleep. Yes, reading, my eyes take a beating.

I’ve been away from publishing for many years and am only now seriously thrusting myself into that arena in the last couple years.

Early on, I had a bad agent and bad publishing house miss-adventure. I got very busy afterward and I just walked away from the business until just recently.

I had three books optioned by a medium-sized west coast publishing house. About the time my work was suppose to be coming out the house split and not remotely nicely. Many writers were caught in the middle of all this.

Aside from that, small bits here and there back then. Point is, I’m here now, and I’m seriously here looking at this as a profession. I take the work seriously. Myself as a writer, I hope, less seriously than back in those days.

I’m not often one for quoting my ex-wife, but she said most writers can’t really enter this profession until they hit 40. I think that is pretty accurate. Experience shaped my work and I think at 40 you can look back and see that and throw all that into your work. You have to go through the agony of those early years to do that. You can’t spare people from that, I don’t think.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

Easy, I’m dyslexic, and not mildly so. This is why I was not a good reader until college, not that I’m good now. I was un-diagnosed before this. I read, and edit profoundly slowly but I write quickly, thankfully! It is a painful process for me, editing.

My early experience marked me throughout my school days. After I got my diagnosis after near 12 hours of testing with a wonderful college psychologist, I flourished as a student. I discovered, in fact, I had a very high IQ, I was not slow (I knew there was something very wrong), my brain was just wired differently and did not see words and such as most did. Most people don’t realize those glitches are not just for words. The thoughts twist and turn and I lose those also. I’m horrible with names, I never remember dates, and my sense of time is horrible. I’m not good in certain venues and formats due to this.

Reading is painfully slow still, editing. There are days I can’t get my words pointed in the right direction, days I simply cannot spell. It’s funny, however, when some people read my work they say it sounds effortless. They don’t hear the huge roar of laughter inside. Effortless, no, painful yes! Thanks to the literature gods for technology.

Some days are okay. I have a prism in my glasses that helps me see the words better. Before that I had horrid migraines. Still do at times. But the problem is in the brain ultimately. I’ve learned to compensate for it. I choose to look at it in a positive light now. Maybe the gift of writing might not be there save for this disability? Who knows?

But it impacts edits, and as a writer and I don’t do public readings of my work. Signings I will happily do. Reading out loud is a painful childhood memory for me. I’m an adult now and can just say no. I will write for you, I do my job and yours is to read.

My generation did not know these things and I would get tossed up front and feel like a sideshow freak. Yet everyone knew I was quite intelligent, which was a strangeness to live with. Often times our weak points become our strongest points however. There is a certain irony in my becoming or being a writer you see. This irony is certainly not missed on me.

Possibly related books:

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Related articles:

• M. A. Walters [Interview: 2 of 2], Conversations with Writers, June 10, 2010
• An Interview with M. A. Walters, by Chris Bartholomew, Static Movement
• Robin Becker: Zombies and Brains [Interview], by Alan Sanders, The Fountain, March 4, 2010

[Interview] Shells Walter

Author, editor and publisher, Shells Walter has been published in places that include Micro Horror, Static Movement, The Shine Journal and Demon Minds.

She is also actively involved with Sonar4 Publications, a science fiction and horror publishing house she started in 2008.

In this interview, Shells Walter talks about her writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was 11 years old reading my first horror story by Edgar Allan Poe.

Poetry is where I started first, then short stories and eventually longer works. I chose to start wanting to get published in 2006. Up until then I wrote for the pleasure of it.

How would you describe the writing you are doing now?

Different and twisty.

I end up writing a lot of what I'm feeling at the time into my writing, of course what I find interesting or researched I put into it as well.

I don't have a target audience per se. Several people who like different genres have enjoyed some of my work. I think I tend to just write and hope people will enjoy my work.

Which authors would you say influenced you most?

Edgar Allan Poe, Stephen King and Philip K Dick have influenced me the most.

I think they had this influence because they went past the barriers that so-called genres allowed them to go. They allowed the readers to be able to feel their work instead of just reading it.

I want readers to be able to have their own sense of emotions when reading my stories.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concerns as a writer is having something I thought was good turn out that it wasn't as good as I originally had hoped. My ways of dealing with this is having a good editor check over my work and possibly see the things I may have missed.

The biggest challenges at times is putting my stories into a specific category. Since my writing tends to fall in several different areas, people sometimes gets confused on where my stories may fit. I try explaining to them what the story is about and in hopes they understand it.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I was shy when I was younger and picked on in grade school. Writing had allowed me to focus my emotions and get them out.

Personal experiences to this day pull the direction of my writing, allow my emotions to run full force into the stories.

Do you write everyday?

I write when I can. I really don't have a set schedule as it depends on time that I have.

However, I often take writing breaks and that allows me to write on a daily basis and that can vary from an hour to three hours.

How many books have you written so far?

I have a horror novella called Bite This published in 2009 by Sonar4 Publications which deals with a Priest that gets bit by a vampire. He then questions his faith on why this happened to him.

Demon Alley, 10 short stories based on your favorite urban legends; a short story collection published by Sonar4 Publications in 2009.

And currently Justice Served, a horror novel published by Sonar4 Publications released in Nov 2009, which deals with a lawyer and the devil. He defends a case for the Devil and he loses it. He then becomes the Devil's personal attorney. His first case is defending the most notorious serial killer known. It is available in ebook and print from sonar4publications.com

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into Justice Served

At times, it was making sure details were accurate and changing some. Since parts of the novel is based on actual events, I twisted some because it was a fictional piece.

I allowed myself not to worry too much and to just write the story. Any real issues were fixed later if I felt they caused a problem.

Also, having a great editor does wonders.

Which aspects of the work did you enjoy most?

Without giving too much away, writing on certain parts of the history in the novel on one of the characters. I have always been interested in learning about this specific person and it was fun including them in the story.

What sets Justice Served apart from other things you've written?

It has more twists and I believe it deals with more history, where others dealt more with just aspect of good vs evil.

In what way is it similar?

It has twists, something I enjoy putting into stories if they fit.

What will your next book be about?

There are a few projects coming out that I'm working on. One is called Dead Practices based on a Zombie Lawyer coming from Sonar4 Publications; a group collaboration of a zombie story published by Pill Hill Press; a group collaboration called The Gentlemen's Club, based on "The Secret Life of Hank Wilson", a short story of mine coming out in 2010 from Sonar4 Publications; and, Devil's Own, the sequel to Justice Served coming out from Sonar4 Publications in the future.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

To have someone say that my work has influenced in some way. Whether it be good or bad.

Possibly related books:

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Related articles:

• [Interview: Part 1 of 5] John Miller, Conversations with Writers, August 31, 2009
• Shells Walter Interview, House of Horror, Accessed on March 18, 2010

[Featured Author] John Grant

The Low Down on High Fantasy
By Alexander James

When it comes to fantasy and science fiction, Paul Barnett has both feet planted firmly on the ground.

And as a lifelong champion of literary quality under the pen name, John Grant, his stance against humdrum and gender-driven books has earned him a place at the top, with over 60 best sellers under his belt, both fiction and non-fiction.

Among the latter are two standard authorities in their fields: Encyclopedia of Walt Disney’s Animated Characters and, with John Clute, The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, for which he received the Hugo, Locus, Eaton, Mythopoeic Society and World Fantasy awards. He has also received a rare British Science Fiction Association Special Award and been shortlisted for the British Fantasy Society Award and Bram Stoker Award.

Two-time Hugo winner for his trailblazing science fiction/fantasy work, his novels include Albion and The World. For younger readers he has written the 12 novels in the Legends of Lone Wolf series, tied to the gamebooks by Joe Dever, as well as retellings of Frankenstein and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

His most recent books are Enchanted World: The Art of Anne Sudworth, Perceptualistics: Art by Jael and Masters of Animation and his quasi-mythology Dragonhenge. And in a courageous move from giant publishers to a small independent house, John published his new fantasy, Far Enough Window through BeWrite Books; his Sci Fi adventure Hundredfold Problem and re-released Earthdoom with David Langford – who with 24 Hugo Awards, has the largest arsenal of these rocket trophies outside the USA and the second largest in the world.

No-nonsense workaholic John has since become Consultant Editor (Sci Fi and Fantasy) with BeWrite and has introduced other mainstream authors to the UK-based house in a bid to break the restraints of mainstream houses he believes hold back writers by demanding that they work to an established commercial formula.

John was born in Aberdeen, Scotland but has lived for many years in the New Jersey countryside with his wife, Pamela D. Scoville, owner of the Animation Art Guild. Apart from his own books, he has lost count of those he’s ghosted and edited … certainly well over a thousand!

His rise to fame came when losing his job as senior commissioning books editor at a major UK publisher back in 1980 turned out to be a blessing in disguise.

He said:

I was living in Exeter – a long way from London, which was where most of the UK publishing jobs were – and I had no money and a wife and young daughter to support. Because of the young daughter, I didn’t anyway much want to move back to London; better, I thought, that she should spend her childhood away from the big city. So my only option was freelance work – either as an editor or as a writer, or, nervously backing both horses.

At the time I’d published a couple of books under the house name I’d created especially for those, John Grant. It seemed sensible to launch my fledgling writing career using a name that already had a couple of books under its belt. Now, of course, I wish I’d not taken that decision; it causes a fair amount of confusion, and anyway ‘John Grant’ is a lousy name for a writer, because it lacks any … hmm … memorability. But I’m stuck with it, especially since winning awards under that name.

Of course, the original idea was that, once I’d worked out which of the two horses was going to win the race, I’d jump onto it and regard the other as merely an ancillary ride, as it were. But I’ve never yet quite managed the trick. So I now have a full-time career as Paul Barnett the editor and another full-time career as John Grant the writer. It makes for a busy life, and often a complicated one; and it can make me pretty difficult to work with, too, I guess. Yet I myself still feel that my more important work is what I’ve done as a writer, and more specifically as a fantasy writer.

Of his fantasy work, top US reviewer Lou Anders said:

Each story from John Grant is like a single facet of a larger jewel. Just as the surrealist Salvador Dali utilized the repetition of certain images and themes across his body of work, so Grant weaves characters, gods and images through all of his novels and stories – each part of a brilliantly conceived cosmology that rivals in richness the work of famous fantasist Michael Moorcock and HP Lovecraft.

John broke new ground with his Legends of the Lone Wolf series with its game tie-in. But it wasn’t his first venture into the fantastic.

He said:

I’d actually made a few minor contributions. I’d edited, Aries 1 and I’d written two humorous sf/fantasy-sort-of fiction books, Sex Secrets of Ancient Atlantis and The Truth About the Flaming Ghoulies, not to mention the parody disaster novel Dave Langford and I had done together, Earthdoom. So I wasn’t a complete virgin.

However, I was a bit startled when I was asked to write this series of novels – initially four of them, in the end 12 – because this type of high, fighting fantasy wasn’t the sort of fantasy I’d hitherto been much interested in. Indeed, I’ll go further than that: at the time I wasn’t much interested in fantasy at all, because too much of what I’d read was the kind of generic crap that still, sadly, constitutes most of what’s published in the field. It seemed to me that fantasy, as a literary form, was a dead end; all the good stuff had already been done by people like C.S. Lewis and George Macdonald and Alan Garner and Lewis Carroll and Mervyn Peake and Diana Wynne Jones.

In short, I was a bit ignorant, and hadn’t realized the possibilities within fantasy. I’ve since become a complete convert, to the point that I will argue at great length to anyone prepared to listen that fantasy is the single most important form of literature the human species has ever invented and, as such, is one of the most important means of expression available to us.

The novels started off as mere tie-ins, but I had the advantage of having a publisher who was completely ignorant of fantasy and completely uninterested in learning anything about it. The first half-dozen or so of the novels were marked by constant arguments, and a couple of them were butchered before publication; but thereafter the publisher got bored and more or less left me to do as I pleased. Which was great!

What I was able to do was, with only a couple of exceptions, make each of the novels different from each other in tone, atmosphere, “feel”, construction, style, you name it, so that I could get away from that awful tie-in drabness you so often see and produce novels that were actually, you know, novels. I always remind people that, if they properly want to understand what I’m up to as a fantasist, they should read The Birthplace, which was #7 in the series, plus a couple of the others, notably The Rotting Land (#12).

There’s a nice postscript to the story. I’ve recently been in touch with an Italian publisher who wants to reissue the whole series in four three-novels-apiece volumes, with me ‘reconstituting’ the texts the way they ought originally to have been published – and at the same time allowing me, in the earlier novels, to quietly amend some of my more egregious deficiencies as a quasi-youthful writer. It’s going to be a vast amount of work, of course; but once I have the ‘real’ texts set in order for them I’ll be able to hawk the books around publishers in the English-language market as well.

John’s Albion and The World crystallize his idea of a ‘polycosmos’ and he rates The World as among his most ambitious and important works of fantasy.

He said:

The stuff I was up to in the Lone Wolf books had convinced me that there was a lot that could be done with High Fantasy, something I’d not have credited before. Also, though by this time I was being allowed quite a lot of creative freedom in the Lone Wolf books, there were some things – including ridiculously trivial things, like using the word ‘shit’ – that I wasn’t allowed to do before. So Albion represented for me something of an unfurling of the wings, an exploring of the freedoms I’d discovered existed within fantasy that weren’t being explored by most of the other kids in the playpark.

Even at the time I thought that first flight wasn’t a frightfully successful one, but the critics disagreed and, far more importantly, so did my publisher, who was I think appalled when I turned in the manuscript of The World to her. (The book ended up being published in the middle of December, doom time for any book, so that by the time the generally astonishingly good reviews started coming in the book was halfway to the remainder tables.) It was supposed to be a nice, cozy bit of formulaic High Fantasy, and yet here was me bringing in stuff from quantum mechanics, telling bits of the story in a vaguely Damon Runyonesque style, switching between one reality and another, smashing universes together, and so on and so on and so on.

The structure of the book mimicked that of a black hole, with the first part as the accretion disk, the second as the plummet from the event horizon to the singularity, and the third the emergence into the fresh ‘elsewhere’; I tried to get some of that into the various writing styles I used, too. There was lots of other stuff in there as well. I’m still amazed by my ambitions in writing that book, and even more amazed that – in my entirely objective judgment, you understand – I pulled it all off. Much of the time I was writing the book it was as if I were simply sitting in front of the screen letting my fingers dart around the keyboard, as surprised as anyone else by the way the story unfolded.

In many of his stories, John – now in his mid-50s – mixes hard science with fantasy.

He said:

There seems to have grown up this notion that the boundaries of fantasy should for some unknown reason be strictly limited – you know, wizards, dragons, unicorns, elves, berserkers, virgin princesses, pigboys-who-shall-be-king. All that sort of stuff is within the remit of fantasy, as are Native American spirits in modern cities and so on, but outer space isn’t. It’s as if you were to tell someone: yes, it’s all right for you to use your imagination, but not too much – rather like the Soviets repressed so much fantasy literature because they thought it was dangerous. That was the biggest compliment ever paid to fantasy, of course, because fantasy should be dangerous, and (in the broadest sense of the term) subversive and threatening to the status quo of the reader’s mind.

In the West, of course, we have very much the same sort of censorship of fantasy in place, only because it’s a commercially motivated one (and in commercial terms misguided, in my opinion) we don’t call it ‘censorship’ but instead say it’s ‘market forces’, or some such.

My very strong feeling is that fantasy should be allowed to do anything it damn well pleases, should explore every possible venue, should be as unconstrained as it wants to be. The fantasy writer’s playground should be one with infinitely distant boundaries.

So when I take my fantasy into the kinds of territories more commonly associated with science fiction, I don’t feel I’m ‘mixing’ anything – all I’m doing is going into a rather unpopulated part of fantasy’s natural playground. There was a fantasy story of mine called "The Glad Who Sang a Mermaid In from the Probability Sea" that was published in Interzone. Before offering it to Interzone I had offered it to a couple of fantasy-anthology editors over here and been told very firmly that it wasn’t fantasy, it was science fiction – just because it was set in large part in between our Galaxy and the Andromeda spiral. It didn’t have a mermaid in it (well, sort of didn’t …), despite the title, but it was a full-blooded fantasy nevertheless. In fact, I discovered some time after the award had gone to someone else that the story had been shortlisted for a British Fantasy Award, so clearly someone recognized what I was up to.

Similarly, a short fantasy novel of mine called Qinmeartha and the Girl-Child LoChi (soon to be published as half of a ‘double’ book, the other half being Colin Wilson’s The Tomb of the Old Ones) was widely bounced by fantasy editors on the grounds that it was ‘obviously horror’ just because I’d drawn on the werewolf archetype for a small part of the story – not even werewolves, just the idea of them!

So I guess you could say that I’m one of those rare members of the Fantasy Liberation Front! Fortunately I’m not the only one, but it gets pretty lonely nevertheless …

It was John’s fierce defense of open-minded fantasy literature that led him to test the waters with a smaller independent publisher offering more scope with its less commercial focus. And that’s how his beautifully illustrated The Far Enough Window: A Fairy Tale For Grownups of All Ages, saw the light of day.

He said:

When I was a kid I used to be devoted to reading in bed (anywhere else as well, but Bed Woz Best), and what I loved above all were the fantasies by people like George Macdonald and Rudyard Kipling and Lewis Carroll and H.G. Wells and Robert Louis Stevenson and C.S. Lewis and … you can fill in the rest of the long list for yourself. Thing is, I suddenly realized a while back that as an adult I still liked those books – I still thought, leaving aside my sheer pleasure while reading them, that they were excellent fantasies. Furthermore, I gained enormous, almost ecstatic pleasure just from remembering that glow I felt as a kid tucked up in bed reading one of them. I put all this together among my slowly jostling brain cells and let it fester for a while.

What I wanted to do was write a shortish novel that would encapsulate all these feelings for me: it would take the form of a children’s fairy tale like Macdonald’s At the Back of the North Wind (one of my all-time favorite novels) or The Princess and the Goblin, but would be for grown-ups – ‘for grown-ups of all ages’, as we put it on the cover – and have a definitely late-20th-century riff to it.

Then along came a time when I actually had a couple of weeks to myself – a publisher had let me down badly on a signed contract – and I thought, ‘Well, here’s the chance to write that novel.’ Trouble was, I knew the ‘feel’ of the book but I hadn’t yet got a plot for it. I went to bed that night and, before I went to sleep, just set my mind free to wander where it wanted to. By the following morning the character Joanna had entered my mind, and from there on she took care of the plot for me. But I had only those two weeks before the next slodge of work was due to come in, so essentially I had to enter a sort of trance state for a fortnight to write the book.

I gave it to my agent and told him it wasn’t a genre fantasy and should be offered to mainstream editors … so he offered it to all the genre-fantasy editors, who naturally turned it down flat – a couple of them, friends of mine, mentioned that they’d been puzzled it had been sent to them. I wasn’t sure if I was puzzled or furious, because the agent had done exactly what I’d told him not to. As far as he was concerned, he’d offered it to half a dozen editors who all hadn’t liked it, so obviously it was a lousy book.

Once I’d moved to the States I asked my new agent to take it on, but he just said it was a lousy book and he’d never be able to sell it. Then, for various reasons too complicated to discuss here, I came across this new small press called BeWrite Books. Pity about the name, but I was mightily impressed by what they were doing – unlike so many small presses, they seemed really professional about what they were doing and planning, and the books they’d so far published looked good. I asked their editorial supremo, Neil Marr, if he’d be open to a submission; he said yes, and less than a week later he came back to me saying he adored the book and very, very much wanted to publish it. Sure enough, Neil’s a mainstream editor …

Right from the start I’d wanted my ol’ buddy Ron Tiner to illustrate it – all the best of those children’s fantasies had had nice black-and-white illustrations in them, and thus so should this one, to help sustain the effect I was after. Ron had been a sounding-board when I was initially thinking the novel over and he knew precisely what I was after with it – he had exactly the same emotions as I had about those childhood times of being in bed with a good book. Luckily Ron was free to do the illustrations, and he’s done a stunning job – they’re truly lovely.

One reviewer pointed out:

There seems to be just a hint of sublimated sexuality in The Far Enough Window. I admit that is something that can be said of quite a few of the traditional children’s fantasies, but Alice in Wonderland never had anything like Ron Tiner’s illustrations of Joanna lying butt-naked on the grass.

John explained:

Only the one illustration! And it’s perfectly innocent, at that. This is, after all, a novel for ‘grown-ups of all ages’. That said, I did tease Ron something rotten about always making sure he got tits into the picture somehow … I’m not in the slightest worried about any kids who read the book being traumatized by the picture; it’s always struck me that certain sections of society throw up their arms in horror at the very idea that a child might see a naked body, when any child can see a naked body by the simple means of going and looking in a mirror.

I didn’t feel any constraints at all. I knew what I wanted the book to do, and I knew what I wanted from it myself; I just sort of sat back and wrote it, guv. The whole process was utterly natural. I guess if I’d been thinking, ‘Wow, I’m doing something a bit different here’ I might have become a bit self-conscious and felt restricted in some way by the form of the novel, but as I’ve said I don’t think any longer about fantasy in those terms: as far as I was concerned, I was simply having the time of my life writing a new fantasy novel, which was something I hadn’t done in a while.

After the success of The Far Enough Window, BeWrite Books brought back to life two of John’s earlier SF/Fantasies – The Hundredfold Problem and the disaster novel to end all disaster novels, the spoof, Earthdoom, with fellow science fiction author David Langford.

John Grant’s The Hundredfold Problem started life as a commissioned novel and part of the famous Judge Dredd series. It had an interesting history before being published by BeWrite Books – with stunningly sexy exclusive cover art by well known European artist, Audrė.

He explained:

Way back when, the UK publisher Virgin bought the novelization rights in Judge Dredd, they expected the upcoming movie to be a smash hit. Of course, the movie was a lead balloon. Another UK publisher, Boxtree, had bought the book rights in the movie, and issued just about every tie-in you could think of – I don’t know if they did 101 Judge Dredd Knitting and Macramé Tips, but I’d not be surprised. It was much like the saturation of the market by Dorling Kindersley of Star Wars: The Phantom Menace books a few years later.

Of course, when the movie bombed all these Boxtree books flooded the remainder tables, and in so doing they crushed the humble little Virgin series, which would probably have continued doing perfectly healthily if there’d never been a movie.

Virgin had commissioned me to write one in the series. Unable to keep my eyes open for more than a paragraph at a time while trying to read the Judge Dredd Manual they’d sent me, and always having had difficulty reading comic books (I don’t know why), I hit on the stratagem of having a plot that would take Dredd right out of his usual environs and away from his usual associates, so I set virtually the whole tale inside a Dyson sphere that had been, billennia before, set around our sun’s hypothetical red dwarf companion star. Then, well, I just had fun writing a romp that also, er, dabbled quite a lot in theological philosophy and other light-hearted hijinks. I think – as of course I would – that a lot of the jokes are very funny, and indeed the book as a whole. Oh, yes, and you see another aspect of the Girl-Child LoChi as well …

Anyway, with the demise of the series, I got the rights back in the book. Most of the series’ authors – including my pal Stephen Marley, who wrote a couple of really good pieces for it – were kind of stuck, because of course they didn’t hold the copyright in the Judge Dredd elements of their books. I’d always been very fond of The Hundredfold Problem, though, and I didn’t like to see it lost forever. It was comparatively simple for me to remove the specifically Judge Dredd references, and – bingo! – I had a novel that was all my own.

I didn’t actually think of getting it published until Sean Wallace of Cosmos – for some reason I don’t recall – expressed interest. So I flogged it to him, but then problems with Wildside caused publication to be interminably delayed. After a couple of years, Sean kindly let me have the rights back and again Neil Marr at BeWrite happily seized it.

John soon became consultant SF/Fantasy editor with the blossoming new publisher … Consultant Editor with a mission.

He said:

The Consultant Editor bit came later. As I said, I was mightily impressed by the BeWrite Books operation from the outset, and this appraisal of them actually grew as they began publishing The Far-Enough Window – even though the whole enterprise is very much run on a shoestring at the moment. Neil asked me at some point why the big boys hadn’t been fighting to get hold of the novel.

I pointed out that this was not the only example I knew of a fine piece of fantasy that the big boys wouldn’t touch with a barge-pole; I came across others from time to time during the natural course of my life, and it was frustrating to me that I couldn’t do anything to help them get into print, as they so richly deserved to be. Out of that conversation emerged the notion that I should have this occasional relationship with BeWrite Books which we dignified by the title Consultant Editor.

By odd coincidence, just a few days later a writer called Chris Thompson, to whose self-published story collection Games Dead People Play I’d given a deservedly highly favorable review in Infinity Plus, contacted me out of the blue to say he’d written a novel which he was pretty certain nobody would like: as I’d been the only reviewer who’d seemed to understand what he was up to in Games Dead People Play, would I like to read his novel and see what I thought. Well, I took a look, and I discovered it was this utterly superb noir fantasy – a truly lovely piece of work. So that was the first book I took on for BeWrite. C.S. Thompson’s A Season of Strange Dreams. I’m proud to have been associated with it.

Since then John has brought other authors to the BeWrite Books stable with cross-genre books bigger, commercially driven houses fight shy of.

With his wild hair and bushy beard, John himself could be mistaken for a character from the pages of his own books. But any perceived similarity is unintentional to the 16-hours-a-day wordsmith who refuses to be typecast.

Carefully avoided reference to Harry Potter, he said:

I think that, finally, published fantasy may be recovering the ground it has so catastrophically lost in the past few decades to generic fantasy – a bizarre branch of the romantic novel whose published exemplars very often bear very little relation to genuine fantasy at all.

When Tolkien created the otherworld of Middle-Earth or Lewis the otherworld of Narnia – and, of course, Macdonald before them in his tales for grown-ups like Phantastes and Lilith – that was exciting, that was imaginative, that was fantasy, because they were genuinely exercising their imaginations to reify lands that had never existed. The vast bulk of their imitators – in reality, Tolkien’s imitators, because I reckon many of them haven’t read the other authors – aren’t doing that. Instead, they’re setting otherwise pretty mundane tales in a shared quasi-medieval otherworld that has become so familiar to us it might as well be Poughkeepsie or Bermondsey.

If I came along to you and said that I’d written a novel that was fantasy because I’d set it in Poughkeepsie you’d look at me like I was a lunatic – well, even more of a lunatic than usual, anyway! – but that’s in effect what a good many writers of generic ‘fantasy’ are doing.

Please don’t take this to mean that all writers of High Fantasy are just regurgitators or new incarnations of Barbara Cartland. There are some very fine fantasists who work with High Fantasy; if I had to put my hand on my heart to name the best of them, I’d probably say Terry Pratchett, because Terry’s Discworld books are – most of them – superb pieces of genuine fantasy, and would remain so even if you stripped all the jokes out of them. Myself, I prefer them with the jokes, especially since humor and fantasy are fine bedfellows – just look at how outright funny some parts of Peake’s Gormenghast books are – but that’s just me.

Anyway, to get back to the point about the current success real fantasy is having in making its comeback against the floods of generic fantasy: I think it’s coming about in large part because of the small presses. One of my many part-time jobs is as US Reviews Editor of Infinity Plus, and this has meant that over the past couple of years I’ve been reading a heck of a lot of books that almost certainly wouldn’t ordinarily have come my way. This includes rafts of small press publications, and even a few self-publications, because IP has the policy of giving all books a level playing-field, regardless of the fame or obscurity of the author and the size and prominence of the publisher.

What has really impressed me is that perhaps eighty per cent of the true fantasies I’m reading are coming from the small, even microscopic presses. Vera Nazarian’s recent book Dreams of the Compass Rose, published by Wildside, is a fine example of what I mean: it’s a High Fantasy, sort of, but because of its construction, its use of language and above all its fabulous strangeness it’s hard to imagine it having been published by one of the big boys.

Naturally, some of the small press books are real stinkers (especially since few of the small presses seem ever to edit or proofread, leaving these tasks to the author), but exactly the same is true of a good proportion of the fantasy output of the big conglomerates, too. What so many of these obscure presses are doing is allowing their authors to … well, ‘dare to dare’ is probably the best way of describing it. The result is some truly exhilarating fantasy. And it seems to be what the readers actually want, because these books sell in healthy numbers despite the fact that they’re given no publicity and – shamefully – no support at all by the established book trade, notably the book stores and most especially of all the literary editors of the broadsheet newspapers.

I think this resurgence of true fantasy is beginning, slowly at the moment but still very hopefully, to percolate upwards. I’ve been enormously cheered by the success of China Mieville; when I first started reading his novel The Scar – I’ve not yet got to Perdido Street Station – I was leaping around the room with delight, because here at last from a major publisher was a supremely intelligent piece of High Fantasy. Del Rey, who publish Mieville in the USA, may well be groundbreakers here, because I was mightily impressed by the intelligence of another High Fantasy they published last Fall, Alice Borchardt’s The Dragon Queen. A pity Del Rey publishes so much other stuff, really …

Anyway, that’s where I see the current state of the fantasy genre right now – in transition, with all the early signs that the patient is not dead but can be expected, although there’s a long way to go as yet, eventually to make a full recovery.

I hope so. I believe firmly in the importance of fantasy as one of the most central expressions of our humanness – possibly the most important. It would be really good to see that significance properly recognized once more.

(With thanks for additional material from Lou Anders)

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[Interview] L. Lee Lowe, Conversations with Writers, November 3, 2008

[Interview] Jason Bicko

Speculative fiction author, Jason Bicko has worked as a barman, garden labourer, care home kitchen hand, slot machine engineer and bingo caller.

His work includes Alien Inc. which is available as an e-book from Sonar 4 Publications.

In this interview, Jason Bicko talks about his concerns as a writer:

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

Unobtrusive, I would like to say. I don’t go in for literary impact because I don’t like that in the books I read. I want the story to go straight into the reader’s head -- I don’t want them to fight through the prose, constantly reminded that they’re reading a book. One author I find excellent at the subtle prose is Stephen Leather.

I have no target audience other than those who pick stories for what they might want to read at that moment. That’s how I read. I don’t go to the crime section in the library because I fancy a crime novel that day. I pick up various books, read the blurb, and choose the one that I like the sound of. It might be a crime novel or a western -- I never know.

My writing style changes constantly and this is because of the novels I read. For instance, after reading Clive Barker’s Weaveworld, I wanted to structure my stories the way that one was put together, broken down into Books, Parts, Chapters with titles, and sub-chapters marked numerically. After reading Stephen Leather, I began to compose my stories in such a way that chapters didn’t really exist, only one-line breaks. I prefer this format now because it keeps a reader reading. I don’t like chapters because it’s too easy to stop reading at the end of one.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

My emotions and personal experiences don’t figure into my writing much.

For me, writing, or reading, is about escapism. It’s like a little mental holiday when I pick up a book or sit before my keyboard.

If I were to have a car crash, for instance, I wouldn’t let that intrude into my mind enough to filter into my writing. But it might give me an idea for a story about road rage turned deadly. In fact, just talking about it makes me want to write just such a tale.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concern is spinning a decent yarn.

Way back, I used to try to come up with an exciting storyline and then make my version of that story. But I was always concerned that the same idea would be out there.

Take a story like Groundhog Day, in which a guy wakes up in the same day every day and must use his knowledge of what’s going to happen to change things a bit. That story has been done a few times, and since Groundhog Day was kind of the template, all the others are judged by it, I think. To me, that means a story might not live to its expectations, and I find that just wrong. So I gave up going for original storylines and concentrated on (trying to) tell good stories.

If I write a story about a guy trying to rescue his kidnapped wife, I know it isn’t the first of its kind. I just hope mine is better than some of the others out there. I just hope it’s a good tale.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Finding time to write is my main hurdle.

Thankfully, I don’t need to sit down in order to plot stories. Once I have an idea for one, I can let it brew like a good cup of tea. Ideas, scenes, twists, they all grow in my head as I live and work. If I hear a good joke, it’s stored in there and will take part in the story one day. When it’s time to sit down and put a synopsis on paper that I will stretch into a longer story, it comes easily. All the ideas I had over the last couple of months, they just come together as if magnetized, then I write.

Do you write everyday?

I don’t write every day, but I always create in my mind. A bit like a musician humming on the bus. I call it plotting. It’s probably more like daydreaming.

How many books have you written so far?

Seven novel-length stories, but these are unpublished. Eight or so short stories that are out there on the Internet. These are all works that came about after I moved cities in 2000.

Before that, I wrote about ten novels, but none of these has survived. My ego hopes they’re preserved somewhere in a bag or box, to be discovered in 50,000 years.

The latest one, Alien Inc. is set for ebook publication by Sonar 4. I fancied doing a gung-ho horror based on that old idea of a bunch of people trapped in one place and hunted by an enemy. I wanted to set the scene, then let it run. There were a few directions I knew it had to take, but I set these as markers and sort of said to my wild imagination, “Do what you want, just hit these checkpoints on the way.” I wrote it in about six months.

Which were the most difficult aspects of the work you put into Alien Inc.?

The hardest part was characters. There were eleven in it, each as strong as the next. That meant keeping track of the emotional make-up of eleven people as they went through the story. Much easier when there are one or two main characters and everyone else is built of a little less substance. It also made the choice of killing them off a bit harder. But that had to be done. Couldn’t have eleven people all survive in this sort of story.

Keeping track of all these people was made easier after the group split into five smaller groups. It became more like writing five short stories at the same time. I would concentrate on one at a time until the group was reunited.

What did you enjoy most?

If you read a Dan Brown book, you see important information on every page. That’s constant attention to telling the tale.

In this story, I mostly got to play. There’s a part where two people are trapped in a carriage on a monorail, hunted by an alien enemy. I just let it go with the flow and didn’t have to think about it or refer to notes. It was fun to write.

What sets Alien Inc. apart from other things you've written?

The horror aspect. I wrote horror as a teenager, because somehow that seemed easier. Setting a story on an alien planet filled with vampires means no wasting time on research. Garlic doesn’t bother my vampires. That’s another story you’re thinking of! I wrote horror because I had no experience of the world, so probably couldn’t have written a courtroom scene or a birth scene realistically. But chopping the heads off virgins came easily.

As I got older, I cast aside horror and wrote thrillers involving real people and realistic events. But maybe I missed the carefree ways of the horror novel.

For me, maybe Alien Inc. was the adult returning to the playground he’d so loved as a kid.

What will your next book be about?

Guy hunting down his lost sister. A good old action thriller set in the murky London underworld. Another chance for me to let the imagination run wild. I don’t often put guns in my stories. I’ll fill this one with them. Can’t wait.

What would you say has been your most significant achievement as a writer?

Having Sonar 4 Publications decide to put the story on their website.

When did you start writing?

I started writing at age 12. My dad had started a creative writing course and I wrote a story to see what he thought. That was the beginning. I had the bug from that day.

I wanted to be published because I wanted my work out there, for all to read. I was young and foolish and didn’t understand how hard and competitive the writing world could be. Pocket money went on photocopying my work and postage costs to send it to the big publishers.

Back then there was no email submissions. I would wait months, get back a rejection letter, and start again. Usually, a rejection letter wasn’t seen as a fail, it was seen as proof that my story wasn’t the one I was destined to be famous for. So rather than tweak that story, I would sit down and do another. I would often send out the first thirty pages as soon as they were completed, knowing that by the time the publisher wrote back to ask for the full manuscript, the story would be finished.

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[Interview] Allen Ashley, Author of 'Urban Fantastic', Conversations with Writers, September 5, 2007