Praise for Twisted Tales Events

'In the past few years Twisted Tales has become a major force in the promotion and appreciation of horror fiction. As well as putting on author readings and signings at bookshops it has expanded into organising larger events, bringing authors and critics together for discussions of the field. I've been involved in quite a few of both and have found them hugely enjoyable and stimulating - I believe the audiences did as well. May Twisted Tales continue to grow and prosper! If you love the field, support them! I do.' - Ramsey Campbell

‘Twisted Tales consistently produce well-organised events for writers and readers of horror. What really distinguishes Twisted Tales for me is the intelligent themes and investigations they pursue, and the high quality of the discussions they always stimulate. As an author I've been invited to three of their events and have been pleasantly startled, to near shocked, by the attendance levels - two out of three were even sold out. I salute anyone who contributes so much to the literary and cultural life of horror fiction.’- Adam Nevill

'Twisted Tales events are wonderful... a great way of promoting 21st century horror fiction. Supported by Waterstone's Liverpool One and really well organised, Twisted Tales brings together established names in the genre as well as new voices and of course readers. Looking forward to much more to come...' - Alison J. Littlewood

Monday 28 March 2011

Carnivàle reviewed by Lorna Jowett

Carnivàle 
US, 3 Arts Entertainment/Home Box Office
Originally Aired 2003-5
Producer: Daniel Hassid et al.
Writer: Daniel Knauf et al.


Carnivàle can be seen as the ultimate HBO show. “It’s not TV. It’s HBO” in many ways: high production values; distinctive visual style; what some people call literariness; complexity; references to other films, TV shows and historical events; a variety of genre influences. To some it might seem slow, talky, pretentious. Watching it, I am often struck by its beauty and fascinated by its creepiness, yet get to the end of an episode and realise that nothing really happened. Though it won Emmy awards and a five-season narrative had been mapped out by creator Daniel Knauf, it was cancelled and ended after the second season. Carnivàle is difficult to describe. Some might say it isn’t really horror. It blends Tod Browning’s Freaks (1932) and John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath (1940) with Twin Peaks (1990-1); it mixes epic history, period drama, and surreal, uncanny horror. Its blend of documentary realism and fantasy is demonstrated in the opening credit sequence where images from tarot cards, famous artworks, and US newsreels of the 1930s do not just sit alongside one another, they literally merge into each other.

This surreal mixture is foregrounded from the opening of the first episode in some of the most striking minutes of television ever. A face (Michael J. Anderson) appears against a black background and intones:

To each generation was born a creature of light and a creature of darkness, and great armies clash by night in the ancient war between good and evil. There was magic then, nobility and unimaginable cruelty. So it was until the day that a false sun exploded over Trinity. And Man forever traded away wonder for reason.

Almost immediately we lurch into a fleeting montage (only 30 seconds long) of surreal, disturbing images (some prefigure events of the season to come), including scenes of trench warfare, a tree silhouetted against the sky, and a man tattooed with the same tree, lit only in flashes and moving at different speeds. This soon appears to be a dream - a young man (Nick Stahl) starts awake and raises his head to see if his dying mother is still alive in the next room. Now we are in Oklahoma during the 1930s Dustbowl and Great Depression, a period setting that the show renders in convincing detail, the palette of sepia tones presenting a weary, faded world. Ben Hawkins is about to bury his mother, see her small house repossessed (similarities with Ford’s film and Steinbeck’s novel are readily apparent here), and join a passing carnival troupe. Ben, the show’s developing narrative suggests, is the creature of light mentioned in the prologue, and we follow his travels with the carnival, woven together with the story of Brother Justin Crowe (Clancy Brown), a Methodist preacher in California.

Horror often operates by situating the supernatural in relation to the everyday world. Here, the realistic setting anchors the show to history, but its mythological struggle between good and evil unmoors it temporally, transcends history. Time itself becomes strange and uncanny. The 1930s is both the real against which the more supernatural elements of the show are contrasted, and a means of paralleling the scale of the mythological battle with epic historical change. The world Carnivàle depicts is at once tangibly mundane and experiencing huge upheavals. This is not period horror in the sense of Gothic, rather the detail of 30s life naturalizes both the freaks of the carnival (we see them mostly backstage or in their trailers) and its supernatural elements (some of which, like tarot fortune telling or mind reading, are everyday parts of carnival life).

Carnivàle makes the freakish ordinary and exposes strangeness in the everyday. Take one of the main protagonists, Justin. As a preacher, he is already attuned to the supernatural, but he is nevertheless firmly located within his place and time. In early episodes he ministers to migrant “Okies,” despite resistance from prominent citizens, and expands his work via the relatively new medium of radio, gaining donations and enthusiastic volunteers from his “Church of the Air” broadcasts. In “Ingram, TX” (2.3) he states that in one radio broadcast he should be able to “speak to more souls” than Jesus Christ “in his entire lifetime”, later he describes an upcoming event as “a Sermon on the Mount for a new America” (“Outskirts, Damascus, NE” 2.8). We could read such comments either as delighted optimism about the potential of radio to highlight religious ideas and social justice, or as a dangerous form of hubris. There are obvious similarities with historical figure Father Charles Coughlin (whose political broadcasts in the 1930s reached millions), as well as a broad parallel with President Franklin Roosevelt’s “fireside chats.” Contemporaneous concerns about the influence of radio on the general public are evident. Are such figures champions of the people, or simply manipulative speakers? Of course, if Ben is the creature of light, then Justin must be the creature of darkness and we are primed to see his actions as sinister, however selfless they may appear.

Moreover, radio itself can be seen as an ethereal, uncanny voice (in the same way that early cinema images were perceived as ghostly) and thus is more than simply period detail in Carnivàle. The uncanny nature of radio is made literal in season 2 when Justin’s broadcasts send a message to prison inmate Varlyn Stroud (John Carroll Lynch). Stroud hears Justin speak directly to him, telling him he is Justin’s “archangel” and consequently Stroud escapes prison to do Justin’s dirty work. Radio takes its place with visions, tarot cards, and prophecy as a means of supernatural communication, offering not simply information or inspiration but a connection to something that transcends everyday life in Depression-era America. As Justin’s Church of the Air sells it, this might be the sublime but it is also aligned with the show’s horror elements.

As Carnivàle unfolds Justin’s façade of righteousness dissolves. His relationship with sister Iris (Amy Madigan) is disturbingly close: both unmarried and seemingly unattached, they live together and are often in each other’s company. Soon we discover that their closeness arises in part from their childhood experience as orphan survivors of a rail accident (“The River” 1.7) when they were Russian immigrants, Irina and Alexi. This story is told through a series of bizarre and disturbingly unreal scenes and we see both siblings resort to violence to protect each other, as Iris continues to protect and support Justin on his path to salvation/ damnation. In a nightmare version of the American dream, Justin is a poor boy made good, his success secured by evil means. Like horror classics from Frankenstein to The Omen (1976), Carnivàle addresses not just morality (in all its shades of grey) but the operation of power on the human psyche and on society. Even the carnies take the law into their own hands in the chilling season 1 two-parter “Babylon” and “Pick a Number.”

The combination of history, myth, and horror is engaging but it is the imagery of the show that lingers, its surreal, dream-like visions (accompanied by evocative music). Some images relate to the social and historical context, the period drama aspect of Carnivàle. Ben sees visions of a mushroom cloud from the first nuclear test (codename the Trinity test, Alamorgordo Range, NM, 1945). This is what Samson’s introduction refers to as “the day that a false sun exploded over Trinity” and it seems to function as an end point towards which the loose narrative moves. Again, this ties together history and mythology, the real “horror” of nuclear weapons and their potential for destruction that ushered in decades of paranoia and Cold War, and the uncanny horror of half-seen, half-understood visions and symbols (science, or reason, displacing wonder). Because the show was cancelled at the end of season 2, however, we never reach this conclusion. Both history and mythology suggest that our fate hangs in the balance.

Characters are developed as much through imagery as through narrative. Ben often sees his father, Horace Scudder (John Savage) in visions. Scudder is a mysterious, elusive absent presence, often shown in evening dress (his stage clothes) making his appearance even more surreal in mundane surroundings. Traces of him include photographs and a death mask found in season 2, eerie versions of a man who rarely appears in the “real” world. Yet more images evoke visceral horror or symbolic dread. Repeated scenes such as the lone tree or the camera moving through a cornfield are unmoored in realistic time (unlike the bear in the trenches of World War I, or the word avatar scribbled on the walls of a mine) and inspire both anxiety and curiosity, that typical horror experience of wanting to see and find out yet not wanting to be confronted by the horror we know awaits us.

The show is slippery in genre terms and also tests the limits (limitations?) of TV drama. Yet its status as a prestige production aimed at “intelligent” viewers allows it to present uncanny, horror elements in disguise, as it were, just as some types of film or TV (serial killer movies, forensic investigation shows) provide the thrill of horror for those who would not regard themselves as horror viewers. Carnivàle, as should be clear by now, is not about blood or gore; it offers suggestive, supernatural, surreal horror, made all the more uncanny and haunting by its realistically depicted period setting and the liberties it takes with conventional pace and narrative. It is must-see TV, if only because something this ambitious in scale might never be made again.

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Lorna Jowett is a Senior Lecturer in Film and Television Studies at the University of Northampton, UK, where she teaches some of her favourite things, including television, film, horror, and science fiction, sometimes all at once. Research currently focuses on genre, aesthetics and representation in television, film and popular culture. Her monograph, Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan, was published by Wesleyan University Press in 2005, she is on the editorial board of Slayage: the Journal of the Whedon Studies Association and she is currently writing a book on TV Horror with Stacey Abbott.

Tuesday 22 March 2011

NEW EVENT: Twisted Tales meets Twisted Tales

Join celebrated writers Jeremy Dyson (League of Gentlemen, Ghost Stories) and Ramsey Campbell (The House on Nazareth Hill, Grin of the Dark) at Waterstones in Liverpool ONE as they each read a deliciously dark tale of the macabre between 6-7pm on Wednesday 30 March.

As well as his achievements on TV (multi award-winning League of Gentlemen, BAFTA nominated Funland) and on stage (Olivier Award nominated Ghost Stories) Jeremy Dyson... is also well known for his horror novels, including What Happens Now and Never Trust a Rabbit.

With his own Twisted Tales, a stage adaptation of Roald Dahl’s Tales of the Unexpected, about to start at the Liverpool Playhouse, Jeremy will read from his fiction before the opening night of the play.

Jeremy will be joined by friend and legendary fellow horror writer Ramsey Campbell who will read from his own distinguished fiction before the pair hold a short meet and greet and book signing at the Liverpool ONE store.

Those with a ticket for the play can book a place at the reading for free by presenting their theatre ticket to Waterstone's staff ahead of the event (otherwise tickets are £2).
 
You can buy theatre tickets from the playhouse here
 

Monday 21 March 2011

Simon Kurt Unsworth interviewed by David McWilliam

Simon Kurt Unsworth was born in 1972 somewhere in the northwest of England, on a day during which no mysterious signs or portents were seen – something that’s disappointed him ever since. He spent most of his early years growing and hasn’t stopped yet, although he’s swapped upwards for outwards these days. He currently lives with his wife and child in Lancaster, which is a good place to live if you like that sort of thing – it has a river, some shops and pubs, a number of good pizza restaurants, and lots of roads of varying quality. He writes when he’s not working, spending time with his family, cooking, walking the dogs, watching suspect movies or lazing about. His stories have appeared in the Ash Tree Press anthologies At Ease with the Dead, Exotic Gothic 3 and Shades of Darkness, as well as in Lovecraft Unbound, Gaslight Grotesque, The Black Book of Horror 6, Never Again, The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 21 and Black Static magazine. His story ‘The Church on the Island’ was nominated for a World Fantasy Award, and was reprinted in Stephen Jones’s The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror 19 and The Mammoth Book of the Very Best of Best New Horror. His first collection, Lost Places, was published by the Ash Tree Press in March 2010 and he had collections due out in 2011 and 2012, from Dark Continents and PS Publishing respectively.


DM: What made you want to write horror fiction?
SKU: The simple answer to this question is I write what I’d like to read! It’s a terrible cliché, but pretty much as long as I can remember I’ve wanted to be a writer, and I’ve always gravitated to horror. I remember going on holiday to Wales with my family at about the age of 12 and liking that the room I stayed in had a really large, wide window ledge that I could sit on – I had visions of sitting on it and writing a story (which I did - a terrible thing about a serial killer’s victim coming back from the grave to take his gory, unearthly revenge, now not-particularly-sadly lost to the mists of time and a lousy filing system). At about the same time, a friend and I started to write a novel together called Cult of the Combines, about Satanists calling up some sort of demonic presence that made combine harvesters come alive and kill people. I haven’t spoken to Alex for a few years, but the last time I did he told me he still had some pages of it in his loft, where I hope they’ll stay! By inclination, I’m drawn to art (music, books, films, comics, TV shows, paintings, sculptures, whatever) that deals implicitly and explicitly themes of fragility, fear, loss, decay, threat (both tangible and intangible) and the overcoming of adversity, and it’s these things I try to write about in  my stories. And bloody great monsters, of course – I still find myself suckered in to even bad movies and books about enormous creatures eating people, and if it’s set either in or on water, or in somewhere cold and snowy, so much the better. I’ve always kind of assumed that other people are like me: sometimes they want an emotional horror story, and sometimes only a creature feature will do it...

When I came to write, I wanted to try to recreate in my readers just some of the fear, excitement, humour and release I found, and can still find, in the things I love. Practically, I suppose I write horror rather than anything else because, at this point, I understand it better than other genres. I’ve read and watched so much now that I think I have a good grasp of the language of horror, of what works and what doesn’t (based, I hasten on to add, on my responses to other horror artworks: which aren’t, and shouldn’t be the same as other people’s reactions, even within horror - some of my friends love horror that I hate, and vice versa).  I’ve found, as well, that horror has no limits other than those which I choose to impose, and I can explore whatever I want within its confines. I can write a story that (for me, at least) addresses the insecurities I feel (and would imagine others feel) when trying to be a good husband or dad or friend, or I can simply write a big dumb story about carnivorous bugs hiding in noodle restaurants that’s intended to do nothing more than scare or horrify – it’s entirely up to me. Horror lets me do it all! Besides, bottom line is, it’s fun and I enjoy it.

DM: What do you consider to be its attractions over other genres and mainstream fiction?
SKU: I’m not sure I’d say that horror is any better than any other genre so much as I respond differently to it than I do other genres. I think that my personality, my genes and my experiences have given me a way of perceiving, wondering about and approaching the world – I’m predisposed to see things and (probably more importantly), react to things in terms of their potential horror ‘content’. I don’t mean I see everything negatively (I don’t) or that I suspect axe murderers or werewolves are lurking around every corner or in every shadow (I don’t...or at least, I damn well hope not), but I do tend to interpret things in relation to where they might fit into a horror story. I’m sure if I was a dancer, or a painter, I’d probably be trying to deal with my world by fitting it into the language of dance or portraits or whatever. Everyone does it, whether they realise it or not – approach the world with a set of values and priorities that they apply to the situations that see, hear about, and/or find themselves involved in. There are excellent novels, poems and short fiction in every genre dealing with the same themes I engage with in my horror stories, some of which I’ve hugely enjoyed even if I couldn’t produce them myself. Horror doesn’t have any kind of exclusive right to address certain issues, any more than romance, crime thrillers or historical thrillers do. To Kill A Mockingbird is, for me, one of the most powerful novels to address issues of intolerance, brutality, love and human connections, themes often dealt with well in horror, but it’s not a horror novel. Could I write To Kill a Mockingbird? No. Could I write a horror novel dealing with those themes? Well, I’d like to think so, even if I haven’t yet...

DM: Which writers influenced your early work and how, if at all have your influences changed throughout your career?
SKU: The biggest influence on my early writing was definitely Stephen King – I read Carrie (1974) when I was about seven (don’t ask!), and although I didn’t completely understand it, I enjoyed it enough to want to read more. When I was a bit older, I started to pick up more of King’s stuff, and loved it; although I haven’t really liked his recent novels as much, his early stuff is wonderful. Salem’s Lot (1975) is, for me, his outright best, and I still consider it one of the best novels ever written, in or out of the horror field. His short stories are also brilliant, and are models of how you can paint the oddest of situations with very few words and yet have them attain a genuine, pinpoint-accurate realism and gravity. Sometimes, even now, I’ll write a short story and then think to myself: “Ah, it’s an Unsworth King!” Not as good, you understand, but I can see a direct influence over thirty years later, and it’s rarely something that I deliberately set out to do. In some ways, the stories contained in Night Shift (1978) are the most influential modern stories (for me at least) that there are.

When my granddad discovered that I was reading King (and, via the NEL imprint, lots of Herbert and Guy N Smith, both good fun and highly educational to a young, impressionable mind), he started to tell me about a range of the classic horror stories and novels (some of which, to my shame, I’ve still not read) and then gave me a book of stories by some bloke called M. R. James. I read them, and have adored them ever since. They are, without doubt (well, without doubt for me, anyway), the best ghost stories there are: witty, scary, intelligent, both personal and yet somehow grand and vast, they haven’t ever been bettered. When I write ghost stories, it’s Monty I always feel like I have peering over my shoulder, even if I don’t always listen to his advice...

After King and James, there are a second set of influences and they spring initially at least from a very specific place: when I was about 13 or so, the big horror book seemed to be Kirby MacCauley’s Dark Forces anthology (1980) (you couldn’t move in my school for copies of it), which I really wanted but which took me ages to get my hands on a copy because no bugger’d lend it me. I wanted it mainly for King’s The Mist (I’d heard it was just superb – which it is), but what turned out to be its most important function was that it exposed me to lots of authors I’d never heard of but whose stories smacked me in the head and refused to be ignored, one of whom remains to this day a huge influence on me. T.E.D. Klein’s story (novella, really) The Children of the Kingdom absolutely blew me away, and remains one of my favourite pieces of writing. He’s not written much, because of writer’s block, but the Dark Gods collection (4 novellas, 1985) is an essential purchase, and his novel The Ceremonies (1984) is also superb. I live in hope that one day, he’ll write something new, but until then I’ll keep on writing my own versions of his stories in my own merry way. Recently, there was a slight chance of me appearing in an anthology with him, and although it doesn’t look like it’s going to happen now, for a few days I was wandering around entirely star struck... I’ve been in anthologies with Stephen King, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman and Harlan Ellison, but somehow Klein remains more important to me. I’m not sure I can even analyse precisely what it is about his stories that I respond to so well: they’re certainly intelligent, well-written, creepy and often startling, but it’s not that, not precisely. I’ll probably never completely understand it, so let me say it as simply as I’m currently able to: he’s brilliant.

A little later, at university, Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea’s Illuminatus! trilogy (1975) was a huge influence. It’s a vast, conspiratorial masterpiece of sci-fi, sex, drugs, rock and roll, alternative histories, underground philosophies and black humour. It has a huge cast of characters, goes into minute detail about arcane historical and philosophical ideas, and yet still manages to be a rattling good thriller. I don’t even particularly agree with all its politics or ideas, but it did make me look at the world in a different way when I first read it, and you can’t praise a book much more highly than that. I’ll certainly never write anything like the Illuminatus trilogy (or its various Wilson-penned sequels and prequels), but I’d urge anyone who enjoys counter-culture fiction to go and hunt this one out, because it’s eye-poppingly great.

There are so many others that it’s hard to list them, some of which are long-standing and some of which have come about more recently. Alan Moore has been an influence ever since I first read Watchmen (1987) (mainly for his detached, intellectual author’s voice, which I’m always very tempted to copy but which never works when I do), as is Junji Ito (especially Uzumaki, 2002 [UK publication] ) for his telling of desperately bleak, massively intricate stories in which individuals face impersonal, malign forces and always but always come off worse. To a lesser degree, Lovecraft’s an influence as well. I’m not a devotee particularly, but when he’s on form there are very few who can touch the cold horror he generates. At the Mountains of Madness (1931) is just ace, and everyone should read it at least once. And then there are my contemporaries, whose influence on me occurs both through their writing but also (and far more importantly) through their friendship, the conversations we have and the feedback they give me: Steve Duffy, Gary McMahon, Stephen Volk, Barbara Roden, Larry Connolly, and all the others. Of course, I don’t want to be too effusive about them in case they get swelled heads...

The other key influence on me is films, particularly the early films of John Carpenter, which seemed to me both smart and populist, capable of shocking, engaging, entertaining and terrifying in equal measure. My stories are often very visual, and I put that down to those early movie experiences, where what Carpenter or Spielberg or Gilliam were putting before their cameras was, frankly, astonishing and made my mouth fall open in wonder (literally, on occasion: not an attractive sight, let me tell you). Stephen Volk’s Ghostwatch (1992) is, similarly, an astonishing piece of television, visceral and intelligent and genuinely gut-crunchingly scary, and it’s fair to say that I’ve been trying to write something as powerful and affecting as it and all of those other films ever since.

I suppose, though, that if I’m being honest, I’d have to say that these influences pale in comparison with the most critical thing there is: the people in my life. I’m lucky enough to have a family who love me and who have supported and continue to support me. Most critically, I met a woman who I fell in love with, to have married her and for us to have had a son, and the relationships I have with my wife and child are more important to me than anything else. Their presence and influence is in every word I write, and my fears about my capabilities as a husband and father, and the potential results of not being good enough, occur regularly in my stories. If I’m a good writer, it’s because of the technical skills I’ve learned and that people have taken the time to teach me; if I’m a good horror writer, it’s because I’m blessed to have something of absolute worth in my life that I’m really, really frightened of losing somehow, and my biggest influence is trying to address that fear.

DM: It strikes me that the father-son relationship is possibly the most recurring dynamic throughout your stories. Not only do you consider the devastating consequences of losing a son, but also the fear and mistrust felt by a father towards his child. How does this play into or against your terror of losing those close to you? Do you find these stories more difficult to write because they deal with taboo emotional reactions to parenthood? How does their composition compare to the process for your less personal stories?
SKU: This is an odd one, really, because it’s not a theme I realised was there until I was putting together the stories for Lost Places and a friend pointed it out to me. It seems to me that I write about this a lot because it’s one of the most obvious and tangible fears in my life. I worry constantly that I’m not a good enough dad, that I won’t be able to protect my son or that he’ll end up in places where I can’t offer him any kind of support, and it’s certainly true that a number of my stories address that fairly directly. I think, though, that more widely, the things I write are all about life’s fragility, about the risks to all of the good things we have and the things that give us stability. My son is a force for good in my life, but so is my wife and I can see how my worries about how I might damage our relationship, about my abilities to be a good husband and friend, are also present in most of the stories. If it’s not as obvious, I suspect because it’s a more complex relationship, so my ways of addressing it are less direct.

Good horror, I think, shouldn’t have taboos; it should be emotionally honest, and should make people think about their own lives and the things they value and how fragile those things are. I use the fears I have, the worries that’ll I’ll do something to damage my relationships with the people I love beyond repair, or that I won’t be able to protect them, to try to make my stories more affecting, although how successful I am isn’t for me to judge. I don’t exactly set out to write an emotional horror story, but for me horror flies when, no matter how bizarre the actual situation (zombie outbreaks, ghosts on the rampage, demons attacking Morecambe), it’s tied into some genuine emotional resonance. Why is a zombie outbreak so affecting? Well, yeah, it’s partly because I might get eaten, but it’s also because if there are zombies, then the rest of my life has collapsed.

As to which sort of stories are more difficult to write, it depends. The emotional ones are certainly more complicated, because I have to have some clear understanding of my own emotional responses (or my predicted ones, if it’s not a situation I’m in or have experienced that I’m trying to write about) before I can get them down onto the page. However, what I call my ‘Twilight Zone’ stories, the ones that are more plot and less character-driven, have their own difficulties, mostly to do with getting the plot details right, finding the right rythym and tone, etc. I recently did two Sherlock Holmes horror stories, which I found incredibly difficult because the horror is only one element of the overal tale: I had to find a voice for someone else’s characters and I had to make the story work as a mystery, placing the ‘reveals’ at strategic points through the narrative. Too early and people guess the end, too late and it’s not satisfying because the payoff comes out of an apparent nowhere – a tough gig. On balance, though, I think tapping my own emotions is harder. ‘When the World Goes Quiet’, a sort-of zombie apocolypse story from Lost Places,  has the most downbeat ending of any story I’ve written and I remember just sitting there on a train after typing it, thinking, “God, what have I just written? What if I’d had to do what I’ve just made my characters do?” and being really upset by it. Of course, let’s keep a sense of context about this: I’m only writing, and as hard as it might be, it’s not brain surgery or mining or social work, it’s not actually hard. I get to do something I love, people seem to like it, I can look at myself in the mirror and not hate what I see, unlike (I hope) some of our political leaders - Nick Clegg take a bow - and I can sleep at night. This is a good life.

DM: Your work to date has received critical praise within the genre and you have been widely anthologized. However, in a market dominated by the novel, you have stayed with the short story format. Why have you eschewed the more commercially viable format in your writing to date? What do you consider to be the benefits and opportunities unique to the short story?
SKU: You’re assuming, with this question, that there’s any kind of decision-making or planning occurred in my writing career! Truth is, when I started writing seriously (in about 2001) I wrote a novel because I assumed that’s what you did. Just about the time I finished it, I changed jobs and had some time available so I joined a creative writing class. I did that mainly to get some independent feedback on what I was doing, and I found that I really enjoyed it. Each week, we’d get set homework, 2000 words on whatever the teacher thought of that week, and I set myself a task: I would only ever write complete stories, and I would follow her rules – if she set a “write something from the perspective of someone who bakes celebration cakes”, that’s what I would do. If I could make it a horror story, then great, but that was less important than sticking to the task. It was hugely important in developing my writing, because not only did I have to start thinking far more carefully about the words I used (and the amount: by nature, I’m long-winded, so a 2000 word limit is a big ask), but it forced me to think a little wider about where horror fits (or doesn’t).

What I discovered not long after that was that there was a market for the short stories I was writing. Starting with the AshTree Press, I began to find anthologies that would at least consider my stuff, and practically it’s easier to write a short story, spending perhaps 4 weeks getting it right, and to then have it rejected than it is to spend a year on a novel and then have it rejected. It wasn’t a deliberate thing, exactly, but writing short stories did give me the opportunity to get my name out there in a way that novels probably wouldn’t have done. Besides, I’ve found I really rather like writing short stories: they’re somewhere you can play with some extremely odd ideas and not have them outstay their welcome.

Having said that, however, the last few things I’ve written have been longer and longer, and recently I have decided to write a novel. I’ve about 30,000 words into a very, very dark novel and I’m enjoying writing it a lot, and finding the complexity and depth that the extra length is allowing me to create something that has (I think, at least) more time to breath and grow. Although it’s on hold for a couple of months while I put together my next collection, Quiet Houses, I’ll be getting back to it soon, probably in April, and am looking forward to it a lot. Whether anyone else will like it, of course, we’ll have to wait and see…

DM: Can you tell me a little about your novel?
SKU: It’s funny, because I’m quite happy to tell people about the novel in person, but when I came to answer this I started to feel a bit … prickly … writing about it. It’s not that I worry that people will read the interview, nick my idea, like it and the write a version of it faster than me, so much, as that if I write about it and it goes public and then I don’t deliver it’ll be like I’ve cheated people somehow. Dumb, huh? I’ve realised that it’s a different thing, chattering to your friends and family about your current, in-development masterpiece, to when you start talking about it in an interview or some other public domain. Then, it’s like you’re making some kind of weird promise relating to its quality, or indeed, that it’ll even actually be finished or see the light of day, and at this point, I have no guarantee that’ll happen… I suppose what I can say is that it’s a very dark, very bleak horror set in Hell. It’s structured as a thriller, with a central character investigating a series of murders and tracking the killer through a very idiosyncratic version of Hell and on the way facing demons and humans, bureaucracy and difficult trade delegations from Heaven. At this point, it’s probably a quarter finished, and I’m really happy with what I’ve done so far. Feedback from my critical circle is pretty good (and these are people I trust to be honest – I save my cronies and sycophants for when I’m feeling low and want a boost), so I’m encouraged to keep writing it, and hoping that it may eventually be published. Watch this space…

DM: Aside from your novel, what are your writing plans for 2011 and beyond?
SKU: Well, the first thing is to finish Quiet Houses. It has to be ready to be launched at FantasyCon in September [see last week's content with Mary O'Regan - Glyn], so ideally the first draft of the text needs to be completed within the next couple of months. After that, I have some short story commitments I’d like to complete, and I’ve no doubt I’ll have some ideas that’ll present themselves and demand to be written for no reason other than they want out of my head. I have a PS Publishing collection called Strange Gateways due out in 2012, which is complete apart from things like story notes, introduction/afterword, etc, so it doesn’t need a huge amount of work. I’m excited about Strange Gateways partly because it’s a PS book, and they make beautiful books and it’ll be great to be a part of the PS universe, but also because I think it shows another aspect to my work. Lost Places is a book I will always be enormously proud of, but part of the fun of writing is stretching yourself and seeing where you can take what you know: Strange Gateways is a weirder collection that Lost Places, and the stories in it have some different obsessions so it’ll be interesting to see how people react to it.

One very practical thing on the horizon is that I’m doing another Halloween reading in aid of Morecambe’s Cancer Research UK shop this year: I did one last year and had a great time, and managed to help raise over £150 for the shop. I’ve agreed to try and write a story set in the shop, and to actually write the story in the upper loft of the shop, which has no light or heat and which is allegedly haunted. My first stint in the room is in a week or so’s time, and I’ve never done anything like this before – it’s either going to be fun or a complete nightmare… The story will have its first public airing at the reading in Halloween, where it’ll be available as a limited edition signed chapbook. So, lots to do, and not much time. Still, it's fun, and whilst it continues to be fun, I’ll keep doing it.

Monday 14 March 2011

Marie O’Regan talks to David McWilliam about the BFS and FantasyCon

Marie O'Regan is a British Fantasy Award-nominated horror author and editor who lives in Derbyshire with her husband – author Paul Kane – and children. She has had fiction published in the UK, USA, Canada, Italy and Germany, and her first collection, Mirror Mere, was published by Rainfall Books in 2006. Her genre journalism has appeared in such magazines as Dark Side, Rue Morgue, Dreamwatch, Fortean Times and Death Ray, among others, and she is currently editing a number of anthologies, both separately and with her husband. She served in various roles on the British Fantasy Society Committee from 2001-08, including editing their publications and maintaining their website, and was Chairperson from 2004-08. Her first World Fantasy Convention was in 2009 in San José, California, where she and Paul launched their co-edited anthology, Hellbound Hearts. Marie ran the registration area at the 2010 World Horror Convention and chaired FantasyCon 2008 with her husband.




DM: I attended my first FantasyCon in 2010 and had a great time. It is, without doubt, the friendliest and most welcoming convention I have been to. If you were to sell a ticket to a fan of fantasy and/or horror fiction who had never been to a convention, how would you describe FantasyCon?
Guest of Honour Brian Aldiss
MOR: FantasyCon is a convention the BFS organises every year; open to BFS members and non-members alike, and providing interviews with Guests of Honour (this year, so far, we have John Ajvide Lindqvist, Peter Atkins and Gwyneth Jones, as well as Special Guest Brian Aldiss), panels on all aspects of the genre, both from a fan perspective and also from a literary one; as well as providing a platform for author readings, book launches etc. It’s true that we’re primarily a ‘literary’ convention, and that a large proportion of our attendees are professional authors, artists, editors, agents and publishers – but we’re not limited to that, we have a large number of people coming who are fans of genre fiction, and want to meet their favourite authors/artists etc. For regular attendees (and there are many who come every year), it’s a chance to meet up with old friends, make some new ones, and keep up with what’s going on in the genre.

DM: How did you become involved with the BFS? What is your current role within the organization?
MOR: A friend of mine, author Gary Couzens, asked if I’d help edit the BFS newsletter, Prism, at the end of 2001 – that was my first Committee role. From there I went on to be web editor, Dark Horizons editor, Membership secretary briefly, and then Chair from 2004 – 2008. I also helped on FantasyCon from 2001 to 2007, doing many jobs from contacting Guests to editing the souvenir programme. I co-Chaired 2008’s Convention with my husband, Paul Kane, and edited many of their publications along with Paul, after I brought him on board as Special Publications Editor. We’re no longer on the BFS Committee as work commitments meant we had to take a step back, but we put in a successful bid to run FantasyCon 2011 with Alex Davis (founder and organiser of the Alt.Fiction event in Derby), in Brighton, on the BFS’s behalf.

DM: Despite being named the British Fantasy Society, the BFS has as many (if not more) horror authors, editors, critics, and fans as members as those associated with fantasy. Given the distinction made in the publishing industry that delineates fantasy and horror as two very distinct genres (a division that I consider to be highly problematic), how do you think the BFS could make its horror credentials more obvious to prospective members from the wider horror community?
MOR: Traditionally, the numbers have tended to be roughly equal. I’m not entirely sure it could be made more obvious without antagonising the Fantasy side of the society. There has to be a fair balance, and – just as important – there has to be seen to be a fair balance, with no one subgenre being advertised more prominently than another, whether that’s the Fantasy or the Horror side of the membership. The British Fantasy Society is a broad church; it was created to celebrate ‘all aspects of genre fiction’, be that science fiction, horror or fantasy; film, book, TV or magazine, or art. As such, the BFS has to be very careful not to be seen to favour one aspect of the genre over another. There are, and always have been, complaints that the Society is ‘too horror’, or ‘too fantasy’, depending on critics’ viewpoints, but the BFS has always endeavoured to remain impartial, and to make sure they offer a fair balance of material and events to their members. I know that when I was Chair for every ‘horror’ event or publication, we’d balance it with a ‘fantasy’ one, so that things were kept balanced. The BFS does also include SF, of course, but traditionally there’s the BSFA, which has SF as its sole focus. As it is, we have a fantastic president in Ramsey Campbell, and the committee also reflects both the horror and fantasy sides of the membership – publications reflect all aspects, as does the Convention… I think to promote the horror side more actively would shift that balance, and the balance is vital. One of my favourite quotes on the subject came from Clive Barker, when he spoke at the FantasyCon Awards Banquet in 2006. He was making the point that we’re all ‘genre’ writers, but that genre writing was the first storytelling. He said: ‘Fuck genre; we are a continent of the imagination,’ and I think that’s right – whether we’re telling stories of Fantasy, Horror or Science Fiction, we’re telling imaginative fiction; and we’re all fans of the same thing, at that point.

DM: Can you describe some of your favourite experiences from previous FantasyCon?
MOR: Oh, there are so many, over the years (I’ve been going since 2003). I first met Paul, my husband, at FantasyCon 2003; that’s the best one. I’ve also met some of my favourite authors, including Clive Barker, Neil Gaiman, Christopher Fowler, Conrad Williams, Muriel Gray… and many of them have since become friends. Meeting Clive was something both Paul and myself had always wanted to do; we’re huge fans of his work, and have even been lucky enough to work with him (and Neil, Chris Fowler, Stephen Jones, to name just a few) on projects such as The British Fantasy: A Celebration, Hellbound Hearts, and Paul’s book The Hellraiser Films and their Legacy. The BFS has become family; so many of our friends were met first at an Open Night or a FantasyCon.


DM: As a writer and editor, how have the BFS and FantasyCon helped your artistic and professional development?
MOR: As a writer… the BFS and FantasyCon have provided a forum for me to be published (I had a short story published in Dark Horizons, many moons ago), and I’ve also made many friends and professional acquaintances at Open Nights, FantasyCon or through my membership of the Committee that have proved invaluable in terms of giving me advice, sharing market information etc. I first met Stephen Jones, editor of the Best New Horror series among other titles, at my very first Open Night in 2001, when he introduced me to my fellow Committee members – since then he’s become a very good friend both to myself and Paul, and is always there with advice if its needed. I’ve made friends with some of my favourite authors, something I never imagined happening before I joined the BFS.

As an Editor… my first editing job was on the BFS newsletter, Prism. Since then I’ve edited Dark Horizons, co-edited various BFS Special Publications with Paul (BFS: A Celebration for example), and learned valuable skills while doing so. I’ve also been part of the reading committee for the BFS Short Story competition in the past. Since leaving the BFS Committee I’ve been lucky enough to edit an anthology with Paul (Hellbound Hearts), and hope to do more of this in the future.


Details of how to join the British Fantasy Society can be found on their website: www.britishfantasysociety.org.uk



Monday 7 March 2011

"Little Terrors" in Kirkby Library: Special Event Report

Twisted Tales is all about promoting 21st Century Horror. The 21st Century has only just begun however and if the genre is going to grow and thrive we need to encourage and inspire the readers, and indeed the authors, of tomorrow. With this in mind we organised an event for a local school and got some authors in to read to them. This is hopefully the first of a series of Twisted Tales young-reader spin-offs under the provisional title "Little Terrors".

For this first event we put out a call and The Chainsaw Gang replied.

Two of their members volunteered to come to Liverpool and give readings (it was initially three but William Hussey was unfortunately unable to make it). With the help of Kirkby Library we were able to get two classes of kids from All Saints School and Jon Mayhew, author of Waterstone's Children's Book Prize nominee Mortlock, and Sarah Silverwood, author of the David Gemmell Award nominated dark urban fantasy adventure The Double-Edged Sword (aka Sarah Pinborough). We were especially happy to be able to hold the event in a public library as we are conscious that at this time these institutions are under terrible pressure from the cuts and Twisted Tales is proud to help to promote them as crucial cogs in the literacy machine.

The authors both gave fantastic performances, answering questions from the largely well behaved kids, as well as giving spirited readings of their works. It was a pleasure to work on an event that was quite different in tone and spirit to the normal Twisted Tales fare and if it inspires just one of those kids to read something new (even if it's not horror), or better yet to get writing, then it will have been worth every second and more.

Below are a few select images from the event:

Jon Mayhew fielding questions

Jon gets to grips with the text

Sarah Silverwood expresses herself

Sarah reading from The Double-Edged Sword


Jon and Sarah
Their books

Our most sincere thanks to everyone involved in this event and to the kids for getting so into it. We hope we can run many more such events in the future but in the meantime - watch this space!