[Interview] P. J. Hawkinson

P. J. Hawkinson lives in Kansas in the United States.

She is the author of Half Bitten (Trafford Publishing, 2010).

Working with Karen Wodke and writing as Wodke Hawkinson, P. J Hawkinson is also the co-author of books that include Catch Her in the Rye: Selected Short Stories Vol. I (CreateSpace, 2011) and Blue: Selected Short Stories Vol. II (Smashwords, 2011).

In this interview, P. J. Hawkinson talks about her concerns as a writer:

How would you describe the writing you are doing?

Karen describes our writing as "a fictional smorgasbord." I agree with her and would like to add that readers can sample our variety of genres in both Catch Her in the Rye and Blue.

Who is your target audience?

Betrayed will be for mature audiences while our short story books and Tangerine would make good reading for readers from young adult to senior readers.

The audience we write for is the one we ourselves fit into. However, in the near future, we plan to write some short stories for older children and possibly even put out a most unusual novel.

In the writing you are doing, which authors influenced you most?

I like to think that the influence comes from within; from personal experiences and observations. Then, of course, Karen and I take these and twist them beyond recognition. But, after reading too many authors to record here, I will admit that many ways of writing twine together to become my way.

No matter what a person reads, experiences, or sees, something stays behind to become a part of you. It may not be something you would ever believe, but everything we do and say was learned from someone or something.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

Actual events from my own life rarely enter my writing.

I did, however, take a house that Karen, I, and another friend of ours had the opportunity to explore as teenagers and slip it into Half-Bitten. It went through quite a metamorphosis but it began from my memory.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

We are working hard to build an audience, a following, but even if it never comes, I can’t imagine not writing.

Do you write everyday?

Rarely does a day go by that I don’t write something. When not actually writing, I am observing. I have a recorder that I make notes on so as not to forget ideas that might formulate themselves into a masterpiece.

My sessions can begin at any time and any place. I work on a laptop, usually at the dining room table, where I can gaze out the patio doors and watch the birds at my hand-painted bird houses, the rabbits frolicking in the yard or being chased by the big yellow cat from next door, and even an occasional hummingbird.

How the session proceeds really depends on what project needs attention. It never ends; things simply get put on hold until I can step back into the time and place I left earlier.

How many books have you written so far?

In Half Bitten (Trafford Publishing, 2010), teenager Trudy Purdy, a self-described 'plain Jane', is attacked by the boy she considers her boyfriend and three of his buddies. They leave her for dead on a deserted beach where she is found by a roving band of vampires. Trudy begins to feel a new power growing within and decides to use this power to exact revenge on Tray and his friends. She wields her newfound strength, gained by drinking the blood of others, to plot the 'accidental' deaths of the boys who had brutalized her. As she systematically destroys her attackers, she realizes she is changing and seeks answers to the unsettling questions surrounding her new powers and how it will transformation the rest of her life.

And, writing as Wodke Hawkinson, I co-authored Catch Her in the Rye, Selected Short Stories Vol. I (CreateSpace, 2011) and Blue: Selected Short Stories Vol. II (Smashwords, 2011).

When did you start writing?

I never really wrote anything, other than helping Karen with silly stories while in high-school, until I wrote Half Bitten in 2010.

After reading the True Blood and Twilight series, I had the idea to write a different type of vampire book and found writing easier than I would have imagined.

I contacted Trafford Publishing and they published Half Bitten for me.

What advantages or disadvantages did your choice of publishers present?

I received 40 soft covers and 40 hard covers along with a number of bookmarks, business cards, and postcards. I was provided no list as to who to send the postcards to and found the prices of their promotion packages to be beyond my means.

After beginning to write with Karen we tried to get traditional publishers but met rejection after rejection, usually due to the fact that we had no agent.

Karen discovered self-publishing options that met our needs and we went live with Catch Her in the Rye a few months ago.

Promotion remains a problem, but Karen is the perfect co-author and plugs our book in as many places as possible and as often as possible. Working full time, I can’t contribute as much time as I’d wish, but I try to do my share.

We decided to initially publish with CreateSpace and first released Catch Her in the Rye as both a soft cover and a Kindle version. Karen next discovered SmashWords which will format e-books for many e-readers and we released Blue on SmashWords and then also on CreateSpace for the soft cover version.

Related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal, By David Streitfeld, New York Times, October 16, 2011
• How self-publishing came of age, By Alison Flood, The Guardian, June 24, 2011
• Reading, Writing and Self-publishing, Conversations with Writers, April 13, 2007

[Interview] Scott Colby

Baeg Tobar is an epic fantasy world that is brought to life through comics, short fiction, novels and other forms of illustrated media.

Scott Colby is one of the project's editor-contributors.

In this interview, Colby talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing way back in elementary school. I was very good at finishing my work long before everybody else, which meant I needed something to keep myself entertained. I couldn't draw worth a lick, but luckily I was alright with the English. It wasn't long before I was cranking out ten page novellas and reading them in front of the entire class.

Since then, I've just kept plugging along, trying to incorporate things I've liked to read into my work. When I saw an open call for writers at Baeg Tobar, I sent in a few samples. Luckily they liked me!

How would you describe your writing?

Fantasy with my own little twist.

I've always felt like the genre can handle a lot more than just the typical "go there, find that" quest mechanic, and I think Baeg Tobar is definitely built along those lines. It's really not as far removed from science fiction as people might think. Remove the details, and you're dealing with the same flexible theme: man against something far superior.

Who is your target audience?

I know it's not necessarily the best idea, but I'm not aiming for one audience in particular.

Lots of writers find a niche by aiming to please a certain set of people. I don't really feel the need to do that. You either like me or you don't, and I'm fine either way as long as you've got a legitimate reason for your opinion.

Which authors influenced you most?

Terry Brooks was probably number one. He began as a bit of a Tolkien impersonator, but he's grown above and beyond that.

I also like to think that I've pulled a lot from Frank Herbert, even though I know I can never touch his prose. He's made me like deep, multi-faceted characters who don't necessarily show the world their true faces.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

I try very hard to keep my writing clear. If the reader doesn't understand what I'm talking about, I'm not doing my job, flowerly language be dipped.

What are the biggest challenges that you face?

Getting started has always been my biggest hurdle, but transitioning between scenes is a close second. I think the two are very related.

I find the best way to deal with any writing problem is to walk away from it. Look at other things, do other things, and give your mind time away from what's frustrating you.

Lately I've also become a big fan of writing things out of order, of plugging along with what you know about one particular thread until you hit a roadblock. Then you work on another aspect of the plot for awhile until you finally come back to your initial problem. I find this works great.

Do you write everyday?

I've been trying to either write or edit 500 words a day. It doesn't always happen, but the days it doesn't are rare. If I become completely stuck on something, I leave it for another time and either write or edit something else or stop working completely.

Unless you're on a deadline, it's best to let these things come naturally.

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

This is more as an editor than as a writer...but I like to think I've gotten Baeg Tobar into a great place. I think we're entertaining, and I think we should be very attractive to fans and publishers alike. It's a huge, complicated, diverse world, and I think it's a lot of fun to see what a wide variety of writers can do with it - but it's also quite a challenge to keep all those writers on the same page, to make sure that everything they do jives and has a place.

If I have to pick one thing I'm especially proud of being involved with, it's Daniel Tyler Gooden's The Unmade Man. I've read it five or six times as an editor, and I haven't gotten tired of seeing it - which, for me, means it's something I really like.

[Interview] Eric S. Brown

North Carolina resident, Eric S. Brown writes horror short stories and novels.

His work has been featured in a number of anthologies, among them, Dead Worlds I, II, III, and V; The Blackest Death I and II; The Undead I and II; Dead History (Permuted Press, 2007) as well as Zombology I and II.

His books include Space Stations and Graveyards (Double Dragon, 2003); Madmen’s Dreams (Permuted Press, 2005); Zombies: Inhuman (Naked Snake Books, 2007) and Tandem of Terror (Library of Horror, 2010).

Brown is also part of the collaborative zombie novel effort from Pill Hill Press, Undead, Kansas and contributes an ongoing column on the world of comic books for Abandoned Towers magazine.

In this interview, Eric S. Brown talks about his writing:

When did you start writing?

I started writing when I was just a little kid. Even when I was tiny, I loved horror. The first thing I remember doing is a rewrite of Halloween 3 because I couldn't live with the fact that it had no Mike Myers.

I decided I want to be a writer in second grade but didn't start trying to get published until I was 26. I started out like most folks I would think. I bought a copy of the Novel and Short Story Writer's Market guide and went about sending out tales.

How would you describe your writing?

My writing is pretty much the love of a fan of horror, science fiction and comic books trying to give back to those genres and write the stuff folks want to see.

I am known for zombies and have written a lot in that genre from Season of Rot (Permuted Press, nominated for a Dead Letter Award) to War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies (picked up by Simon and Schuster and set for a new release later this year).

But I write a lot of other stuff too ... from things like Bigfoot War (which plays off my own childhood fears of Bigfoot) to How the West Went to Hell (which is a demon-plague end-of-the-world story set in the Old West).

My target audience is anyone who loves horror, zombies and such and is looking for a fun and good read.

Like I said, I think of myself as a fan more than a writer and am just trying to write the things I think fans want to see that I know I do.

Which authors influenced you most?

Jon Maberry (Doomwar from Marvel Comics) is a hero of mine and has helped me a lot. David Dunwoody (Empire) is a dear friend as well.

I would say my influences though are H. P. Lovecraft, George Romero, and David Drake.

What are your main concerns as a writer?

My main concern is that my work is entertaining and fun to read.

I don't try to be all literary and highbrow. I just want my readers to enjoy a good story and hopefully be scared by it.

How have your personal experiences influenced your writing?

I did a book called World War of the Dead (Coscom Entertainment) that is a Christian zombie novel because I myself am a Christian and Bigfoot War is literally the Bigfoot movie I also wanted to see as a fan.

As a writer, what are the biggest challenges that you face?

I tend to take on too many projects.

I had eight books published last year, will have nine this year, and already have a new one (The Brethren of the Dead) from Sonar 4 Publications due out in 2011.

In addition to this, I do numerous tales for anthologies and such as well as juggle columns, a four-year-old son, and real world life.

I am still learning to juggle everything as I go.

How many books have you written so far?

I will not be listing anything written by my pen names but Eric S. Brown has written the books that include:

• Space Stations and Graveyards (Double Dragon, 2003)
• Dying Days (Silver Lake, 2003)
• Portals of Terror (Publish America, 2004)
• Madmen's Dreams (Permuted Press, 2005)
• Cobble (Mundania, 2005)
• The Queen (Naked Snake Books, 2005)
• The Wave (Naked Snake Books, 2006)
• Waking Nightmares (Silver Lake, 2006)
• Zombies: Inhuman (Naked Snake Books, 2007)
• Zombies: Inhuman - the expanded edition (Black River, 2009)
• Unabridged, Unabashed, and Undead: The Best of Eric S. Brown (Library of the Living Dead, 2009)
• War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies (Coscom Entertainment, 2009)
• Season of Rot (Permuted Press, 2009)
• Barren Earth (Library of the Living Dead, 2009)
• World War of the Dead (Coscom, 2009)
• Tandem of Terror (Library of Horror, 2010)
• How the West Went to Hell (Pill Hill Press, 2010)
• Bigfoot War (Coscom, 2010), and

I also edited the anthology The Wolves of War for Library of Horror Press in 2009.

My pending titles include:

• Kinberra Down (Pill Hill Press),
• Undead Down Under (Pill Hill Press),
• Anti-Heroes (Library of the Living Dead Press's SF imprint),
• War of the Worlds Plus Blood Guts and Zombies- the mass market edition (Simon and Schuster),
• The Weaponer (Coscom),
• The Human Experiment (Sonar 4 Publications), and
• Brethren of the Dead (Sonar 4 Publications).

And in the very beginning of my career I had eight small press chapbooks published including titles Zombies: The War Stories, Flashes of Death, Blood Rain, Still Dead, etc.

Do you write everyday?

I do write everyday. I have so many deadlines I have to. It's all pretty much random. I always do at least 1,000 words a day.

How long did you choose a publisher for Bigfoot War?

My last book to be released was Bigfoot War. I already had a multi-book deal in place with Coscom and they agreed to let me bring my vision of Sasquatch terror to print.

The book I am currently working on is The Brethren of the Dead for Sonar 4 Publications and is a direct sequel to my tale, "The Queen" which was reprinted in Season of Rot.

Which aspects of this work do you enjoy most?

I love being a writer because it's been a lifelong dream of mine. It's awesome to make up tales of the end of the world and get paid for it.

What will your next book be about?

My next book that I am writing, The Brethren of the Dead, is a mix of pirates and zombies on the waves of the ocean dueling it out in a post apocalyptic world.

This world was established in my novella "The Queen" from Season of Rot and is a fan favorite among my work. I am excited about revisiting this world and playing up the pirate element that fits so naturally into it.

Sonar 4 Publications is also releasing my superhero novel, The Human Experiment which is the origin story of my character Agent Death who is also featured in the book Anti-Heroes both due out later this year.

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

Just being a writer.

Possibly related books:

,,

Related articles:

• Author gives fangs to a rich vein of prose, By Michelle Griffin, Sydney Morning Herald, June 26, 2010
• Interview with Eric S. Brown on Bigfoot War, By M. S. Gardner, Living Dead Corner, June 9, 2010
• M. A. Walters [Interview], Conversations with Writers, June 10, 2010

[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

[Featured Author] Hunter Taylor

Medieval Life & the Supernatural
By Alexander James

Publishers, with their obsessive desire to pigeon-hole novels, see a clear distinction between historical fiction and fantasy … but author Hunter Taylor thinks they’re missing a vital point.

In her book, ancient history is where fact and fancy meet on equal terms.

Hunter’s firm belief is that the supernatural must be accepted as an integral part of early medieval life to accurately recreate the times of which she writes and the mindset of those who populated the forests, villages and towns of a bygone era.

Before the line between reality and myth had been drawn, war raged between the new religion and the old -- and she calls on her own rich heritage as well as painstaking historical research to bring to life times of bloodstained reality and magical legend in her remarkable debut novel, Insatiate Archer.

Hunter’s family heritage is rich in ages old Celtic and Native American tradition and a store of folklore and intimacy with nature helped create the book’s unforgettable heroine, Susanna.

In her extensive and unfettered research, she found that the deeds of the mighty were carefully written down on parchment and calfskin, but the lives of everyday folk were recorded in poem, song and fireside stories that rang with their own truth.

Reality lay somewhere between documented history and magical legend in the misty past when witches and their public burnings were both equal facts of life.

This realisation led to the development of her complex and unforgettable lead character Susanna, whose startling, differently coloured eyes mark her as a sorceress, and who is a high priestess of the secret and sacred druidic groves, struggling to embrace the best of Christianity. And the deep-rooted superstitions and unholy terrors of those dark times also created the monstrous Yellow Curate who will stop at no evil to rid the world of Susanna and her kind.

Hunter’s seamless blend of 14th Century fact and myth produces a breathtaking odyssey through a land in the birth pangs of change, where Susanna is never more than a footstep ahead of the sadistic cleric obsessed with her destruction.

But the book’s mirror-true reflection of life in a cruel age where illiteracy and misunderstanding ruled is not the result of insightful and open-minded research alone; much is instinctive and drawn from the author’s inherited feeling for the times and people recreated in Insatiate Archer.

As a former military journalist, Hunter -- who is now a full-time author and lives with her husband in Texas -- also weaves into her work personal family folklore and a closeness to nature inherited from ancestors rich in the wisdom of ages.

She said:

I am on every page in my own right, but I am there in the presence of everyone who nourished or influenced me. My grandmothers are there with their store of homegrown remedies and old family tales. My Celtic father, with his never-ending humor and great creativity, is there. The people with whom I trained in the Army are there. My travels around the country and the globe are there. All the experiences of a lifetime -- and the lifetimes of those close to me -- come together.

My childhood was filled with the kind of history in which the story is set, with a strong oral tradition in tales of adventure and mystery. My father was Celtic Scots, and family lineage also includes direct ancestors who were Native American as well as old Germanic and Irish blood lines

This heritage of folklore and harmony with nature was a tremendous source of
inspiration as I wrote of times shrouded in myth and of people close to the earth, independent in their ancient beliefs and facing a changing world. Although my story is set six hundred years in the past, the circumstances and characters felt very close to home. I could feel part of them.

I could understand that, in their world, there was little if any distinction between the real and the supernatural. For the book to recreate this (what is to us) strange balance, it must honour fantasy as well as cold fact and include elements of both forms of the prevailing reality.

The result is that Insatiate Archer’s mystic heroine, Susanna, is a flesh-and-blood woman of her time, but one who readers can understand and identify with in the materialistic 21st Century.

Hunter said:

Susanna first came to me in the early 1980s while I was serving with the Army in Germany. Through the years, she evolved from a slightly fairy-tale being into a real presence, strong-willed and adventurous.

In the early 1990s, while living in New York City, I saw a revival of the musical, Camelot. It occurred to me then that of all the people in the Arthurian legends, the character of Nimue was largely unexplored. She is usually portrayed as conniving, a thief of Merlin’s magic who seals him in a cave and leaves him there. She did not seem so to me. I saw her as a highly intelligent young woman, assertive and independent. She became the ancestor of Susanna.

So the character of Susanna is original, although it has been said that all writing, no matter how the author may deny it, is to some degree autobiographical. I confess I did not see this as I was writing the novel. When it was completed and had sat the shelf for a time, I took it down and read it again. And it was there -- me and my family ghosts.

Hunter’s title is taken from poet Edward Young’s 18th Century Night Thoughts: “Insatiate Archer! could not one suffice? Thy shaft flew thrice, and thrice my peace was slain.”

Hunter explained:

When I saw the quote on an old gravestone in Norfolk, Virginia, marking the resting place of a mother and her two children, it seemed to sum up the losses suffered by Susanna in the book. The harsh impersonal randomness of life itself.

The intertwining of historical fiction and setting with elements of fantasy came about as a result of my reading King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, the King James Bible, and Playboy magazine. These may appear to be wildly divergent sources, but they all played a role in the conceptualization. Our modern lives tend to become bogged down in mundane detail. I believe that real life today -- as well as in days of old -- is something of a combination of fact and fancy, of the ordinary and the extraordinary. So even in the 21st Century, we can understand the touches of fantasy that make my book a more accurate mirror of life in the medieval times of which I write.

I have been interested for some time in the idea and the history of the manner in which women were persecuted as witches. This goes hand-in-glove with the struggle between the old religions and Christianity.

The unicorn has a part to play in the book; a creature that’s been associated with Christ and the early Christian church, the older nature-based religions, and belief in gods and goddesses. The image of the unicorn has been found in such widely divergent localities as ancient China and on the royal seal of England. You may have noticed that even in cyberspace, it’s one of the most popular avatars in chatrooms and forums. It’s almost like a genetic memory.

But to ensure historical correctness I researched histories of religions, witchcraft, ancient myths and legends. For instance, one seemingly fantastic episode in my book is based on an event actually documented in Geoffrey of Monmouth’s The History of the Kings of Britain.

As between forms of religion, I have no doubt about this blurred line between fact and fantasy in history. I feel that recognizing this in a novel accurately reflects the mindset of those who populated our world in olden days. I’m sure my ancestors would agree.

Hunter’s passion for writing goes back to early childhood and, ever since, she has always translated her thoughts into words on a page. She said:

I cannot remember a time when I was not serious about writing. I believe it would be truly traumatic for me if some circumstance should keep me from it.

My earliest memories are of a love of words; reading, and the enchanting experience of writing. As a child, I haunted the public libraries and read incessantly.

I remember reading the same lyrical passages again and again, savoring the way the words were constructed to evoke an emotion, a scene, or a thought. I loved John Steinbeck, and Jack London; Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Hardy; and later, Tony Hilllerman. And I cannot read enough of Erica Jong.

So I have always known I wanted to be a writer. It was a question of arranging my life to allow me to write; family responsibilities had to come first for many years. I don’t believe I had early successes or failures in writing, just in getting to a point in my life where I could devote myself to writing.

Even in uniform, Hunter was armed with a pen. She said:

I trained as a military journalist and wrote for military newspapers, magazines, radio and television for more than 20 years. I also read as much literature as possible, and took every writing, poetry, literature and English class I could find at nights and on weekends, sometimes traveling hundreds of miles.

I even took leave to attend longer courses. I once camped at Stratford-upon-Avon, England, and lived in a tent to study [William] Shakespeare. I also commuted weekly from Germany to England over a period of several weeks to attend another Shakespeare course, and from Germany to Spain to complete a creative writing workshop.

I think the way to hone writing skills is simply to write as much as possible, trying different styles, subjects and venues. And it helps to have really good editors interested in your work, such as my editor at Fort Carson, Colorado, Sam Sears, and the people at BeWrite Books who helped me to fine tune Insatiate Archer.

My training as a soldier gave me the background and discipline necessary to focus on my mission and to develop an attitude of ‘failure is not an option’. These are things that serve me well in all areas of my life. All writers need a sense of discipline and mission to complete the long and arduous task of completing a novel.

One thing I have learned that Iwill share: you cannot write after all your work is done; your work is never done. If you try to write in your so-called ‘free time’ you will never write. You have to learn that the dishes will wait, the laundry is patient, dust is non-toxic and sandwiches are nutritious. All else can wait, but your Muse cannot. If you ignore her, she will become bored and desert you.

Life revolves around writing for Hunter, but it doesn’t fill every waking hour. She said:

I stay very busy, which I like; I have a low boredom threshold. I am an instructor at Central Texas College, I am pursuing doctoral studies at Union Institute & University, I write every day, I design and conduct writing workshops for disadvantaged populations, I am involved in animal rescue efforts and I am active in my church.

In my free time I say hello to my husband … seriously, I’m blessed with a life-mate who understands my drive, and helps me to find time for all I feel I must do. Soldiers don’t have a lot of opportunity to make lasting friends in the Army, because of the frequent moves. But the friends I have made have always known that I write; for me, writing is a normal state -- and my husband and my family have always been there as an inspiration.

I have traveled a long and often bumpy path, and each hardship has made me stronger. Many years ago my Celtic grandmother said that when people find happiness in their lives they feel a need to give something back, and that each of us has been endowed with our own special gift, one that we can share. It may not seem to us a very special blessing; we are accustomed to it, and we may take it for granted.

Writing is my gift and my passion, and is what I want to share. Writing is my way of honoring the many blessings in my life.

Insatiate Archer is the first in a trilogy of linked novels. Hunter is currently at work on the second, set two centuries later with a descendent of Susanna’s as protagonist. Again deeply researched hard fact and documented myth and magic will be interwoven to recreate a lost age in which reality had a less rigidly defined definition.

This interview was first published by Twisted Tongue Magazine

Related resources

Author's website

Related books

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Related article

Ghosts, a Haunting and an Exorcism, Conversations with Writers, March 3, 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