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 November 2011

Twisted Tales of the Weird West: Event Round-up

What's better than an event round-up? A Wild West event round-up. Better yet, a *Weird* West event round-up. You braved the Liverpudlian gales to be with us on Friday and hear three great readings from Joel Lane, Amanda Hemingway and Gary McMahon as they delighted us with their stories from P.S. Publishing's new release the anthology Gutshot. Each story was introduced, as was the event as a whole, by Gutshot's editor, and a Twisted Tales favourite, Conrad Williams. You were then spoilt even further when yet another of the anthology's contributors Simon Bestwick joined the table to take part in an enlightening and spirited discussion of the Wild and Weird Wests.

Thanks to everyone who came out on such a wild and windy day, and also thank you to Joel, Amanda, Gary and Conrad. Here are some photos from the event which was decorated more in-line with the idea of Winter Wonderland than Wild West (yes, folks who attended the event, I'm not above using the same quip twice):

Conrad Williams introducing the night's entertainment.

Joel Lane reading his story "Those Who Remember".

Amanda Hemingway reading her story "Ghosts".
  
Gary McMahon lends his voice to his story "El Camino de Rojo".
 
Finally, the full assembly during the Q+A. From L to R: Gary McMahon, Conrad Williams, Amanda Hemingway, Joel Lane and Simon Bestwick.

Twisted Tales will return in January 2012. Keep an eye on the blog for further information about upcoming events.

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Gutshot Competition Winners

Another sizeable batch of you entered our competition to win a free copy of P.S. Publishing's anthology of weird west fiction Gutshot. Unfortunately only three of you could win, but congratulations to those three people who are:
  • Darren Gallagher
  • Peter Tennant
  • Graham Weaver
Your free copy of Gutshot is winging its way to you as you read this.

Thanks to everyone who entered and to P.S. Publishing for providing the prizes.

If you didn't win then don't be disheartened, you can still pick up a copy of the book with a special on-the-night discount of £3 if you come along to our evening of Weird West wonderment this Friday (25th November), 6pm @ Waterstone's Liverpool One.

Monday 21 November 2011

Joe R. Lansdale interviewed by Glyn Morgan


Joe R. Lansdale was born in Gladewater, Texas, now lives in Nacogdoches and is the writer in residence at Stephen F. Austin State University. He also teaches at his own Shen Chuan martial arts school and is a member of the Martial Arts Hall of Fame. He is the author of numerous novels and short stories which can be described as being horror, westerns, science fiction, mystery and suspense, or more commonly a mixture of those genres. He has also written for comics and cartoons such as Batman: The Animated Series. Over his career he has won eight Bram Stoker Awards, a British Fantasy Award, and had several novels listed as New York Times notable books of the year, not least his novel The Bottoms which is by far his most acclaimed, picking up the Edgar Award for best novel amongst other accolades.

You can find out more about Joe and his writings on his website: www.joerlansdale.com/

GM: Let's start at the beginning, which authors and books did you read that made you want to write, and in particular make you want to write the kind of material which you produce today?
JRL: There are so many. Early on it was comics, comics, comics. I loved DC comics the best, and almost as much, Classics Illustrated, which were comics based on classic literature. They led me to reading so many books I might not have read, though later. There was not a library handy when I was really young in Mt. Enterprise. That came a little later. There was a book mobile, and I read what I could get there, including classics. Kipling, Stevenson, Twain, London, all of those great writers. I loved Homer’s The Iliad and Odyssey, and anything associated with Greek and Roman mythology, Norse was also interesting to me. Later I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs and I went from wanting to be a writer to having to be a writer. He hooked me through the gills. I also loved Algernon Blackwood, and Arthur Machen. Later I found many other writes of horror, but before that, these were the guys. Richard Matheson, Charles Beaumont, first through The Twilight Zone, and then the stories. Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, a little later. Robert E. Howard, and then when I had the small amount of college I had, I was introduced to Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and many others. Later it was Flannery O’Conner, Carson McCullers, well, the list goes on and on.

GM: This interview is a tie-in to our Weird West event based on the Gutshot collection. How did you find yourself writing weird westerns and did you even imagine you would find yourself considered one of the primary figures in the genre?
JRL: I’m surprised by it, and pleased by it, but Weird Westerns are not new. Robert E. Howard wrote them, and others, and when I was growing up there was a horror western trend. My favorite of those was Curse of the Undead, which was a vampire western, and one of the influences for my novel Dead in the West.

GM: The publication of Gutshot is just one example of the weird west that's surfaced in recent years. With films like Cowboys and Aliens, the Jonah Hex adaptation, and video games like Red Dead Redemption: Undead Nightmare receiving massive mainstream publicity do you think Weird West is finally coming to the fore of the popular zeitgeist?
JRL: I think it’ll have a moment here and there, but I doubt there will be a big trend. It’s just more common than before, in comics, film, stories and books. I think it’ll always be a sub-genre of a sub-genre, but a healthy one from time to time.

GM: A lot of the Weird West material I've encountered has mixed horror with the western, but there's also been a healthy amount of humour - either tongue-in-cheek genre self-consciousness, or something a little darker. This is also certainly true of your own work which has never been afraid of injecting some humour. How do the two to ideas of horror and humour play together? Do you find they are opposing forces that need to be balanced or are they more complementary than we might first think?
JRL: Humor comes to me naturally, but certainly it was Mark Twain and Robert Bloch that gave me permission to do it by reading this approach in their work. Others like Fred Brown also influenced me. But mostly I sort of see the universe that way, as sadly humorous. The older I get, the more satirical that humor has become. I was influenced heavily by genre writing, but by the time I began to write, I was also influenced by more mainstream literature, much of which used irony and satire more securely. I think it all just ran together, like spilt paints. And I do find one balances out the other, but it’s harder to do than some might think. Just having a humorous moment or a humorous line is not the same as blending the two ideas. If you just put in a funny moment without consideration of how it weighs with the rest of the work, you can tilt the entire thing over.

"Two Gun Mojo" one of the
Jonah Hex titles Joe worked on.
GM: You expressed your early love of comics and years later you would find yourself writing some, particularly relevant here DC's cowboy Jonah Hex, how different do you find writing comics to writing novels and short stories, does your process differ depending which you're working on?
JRL: It’s a different mindset. I find it easier, but saying that doesn’t mean I find it easy. It’s just an easier form for me than writing stories and books, but each of those things requires a certain knack and mindset. I know a lot of writers who have tried comics and failed miserably because the mindset is so different, and the same could be said for film. It’s a different way of thinking.

GM: Sticking with comics. If you could have absolute free reign with any established character in the vast pantheons of comic book characters, who would you want to write stories for and what might they entail?
JRL: Jonah Hex again. Batman. Hawkman. Tarzan. John Carter of Mars. The last two are not thought of as comic properties, but they have been so many times, I’d love a crack at them. Also, David Innes of Pellucidar.

GM: A lot of your novels feature homosexuality, or homosexual characters, not least the character Leonard Pine who along with Hap Collins is a principle character in many of your novels. It goes without saying that this is a big issue in the USA at the moment, and the push for improved rights and recognition for homosexual couples in the States has been likened to the African-American or Feminist Civil Rights movements. Is this an issue which you would say is particularly important for you?
JRL: Fairness and common sense are always important. I have gay characters in my work because I meet and know gay characters in life. Same as blacks and hispanics and so on. I’m trying to represent the people I know. I also think that even if I am writing entertaining books, that it’s fine if I have social and political views in them. Some readers and writers disagree, and I say, that’s fine. I don’t always think a work has to have that, but it’s a natural outgrowth for me. I’m a professional writer, and I’m serious about it. I was born in the fifties and grew up in the sixties, which was a time of change as far as Civil Rights went, so it’s imbedded in me.

Bubba Ho-Tep
GM: The only film adaptation of one of your books or screenplays that I've seen is Bubba Ho-Tep [a retired Elvis and "JFK" fight off an Ancient Egyptian mummy who attacks their retirement home] but from what I can tell a number of your other works have been optioned, are we going to see any other full-length films based on your work in the near future?
JRL: A number of films look possible. A film of my short story, with screenplay by my son Keith, was filmed this summer, and should be out by next summer. It’s called Christmas with the Dead. Not sure when it will actually go into main distribution. It’s very low budget, but its fun. I’ve been working on a film with Bill Paxton and Brad Wyman of my novel, The Bottoms. Still hoping. The Drive In is possible right now, as is Cold in July. There are others optioned, but those look the most likely right now, but in film, that can change overnight.

GM: And to finish off, what upcoming projects have you got that you'd be willing to tell us about?
JRL: My novel Edge of Dark Water, which may be my best work, is coming out in March from Mulholland Press, and I think it’s a humdinger. I have a young adult book out now, All the Earth Thrown to the Sky, and am currently writing another one, along with a few short stories.



Monday 14 November 2011

Ghoultown's Count Lyle interviewed by David McWilliam


The devilishly eclectic Ghoultown have thrilled, marauded, and rocked their way across the musical badlands for nearly 13 years. Born in Texas circa 1998, Ghoultown has been described by Synergy Magazine as "the ultimate embodiment of tequila drinking hillbilly rock". The band's sixth studio effort, Life after Sundown, proves to be their most ambitious material to date. The album is a unique mix of horror rock, punktwang and spaghetti western flair. Think of it this way ‐‐ if Rob Zombie and Johnny Cash were tossed into a meat packer, Ghoultown is what would come out the other side.

In addition to the success of Life after Sundown and Skeleton Cowboys their latest single on Zoviet Records Ghoultown was invited to write and perform a new theme song for iconic horror maven, Elvira. The starstudded tribute was released as the Mistress of the Dark ultra-single, complete with a DVD featuring the music video by director Gris Grimly and an audio CD of new songs including “Mistress of the Dark” and remixes. The video was also featured on Elvira’s nationally syndicated show, Movie Macabre, in 2011. Hailed as pioneers of hellbilly rock, Ghoultown continues to make hearts race and skin crawl on their pursuit to turn the music world upside down ‐‐ one soul at a time.

Ghoultown are:
Count Lyle vocals/guitar
Jake Middlefinger
- lead guitar
Santi - bass/vocals
Lizard Lazario acoustic guitar/vocals
Dalton Black drums
Randy Grimm trumpet

Related websites:



DM: How and why did you put Ghoultown together?
CL: While doing a horrorpunk band back in the 1990’s, called The Killcreeps, we started writing some dark western type material, which had a cool feel to it and a lot of unique personality. When I disbanded The Killcreeps, I thought it would be cool to explore the dark western angle by combining that with punk, rockabilly, and gothic sounds. I had always wanted to create something musically that was very unique, so when I came up with the name Ghoultown, it seemed to be a great concept and had the potential to stand-out from the crowd. 

In 1998, I started writing songs and putting together the members. It started out with a few of the ex-Killcreeps and an old friend of mine, Lizard Lazario, who came in on acoustic guitar. I found a few of the other players by placing an ad in the local music paper. Over the years we’ve evolved a bit from a more spooky, gothic country sound to a more hellbilly cowpunk-rock sound, but it’s still the same basic idea of dark western music that has continued.

DM: When I first heard Ghoultown described as 'Weird West psychobilly', I thought that it sounded like the most niche band in the history of music. However, working my way through your back catalogue, I found that you cover a wide range of styles. Who are your main musical influences?
CL: My musical taste is all over the place, so it’s hard to pinpoint any specific bands that influenced Ghoultown. I love old country, hardcore punk, all kinds of metal, and spaghetti western soundtracks, so any music that fits into those categories is subject to being thrown about in my song compositions. The cool thing about Ghoultown is that I can get away with incorporating a wider range of stuff and it all seems to work since Ghoultown is pretty much its own niche. There’s no rules except the ones I make up.

There are drawbacks to being your own niche, though. After years of battling the music industry and trying to advance Ghoultown beyond cult status, I’ve discovered that people mostly like music that fits into definable genres. Nobody seems to know what to do with us. But I’d rather be fronting Ghoultown than some other run-of-the-mill type project, even though admittedly it would probably be an easier road.

DM: People mean lots of different things by the term 'Weird West', but in Ghoultown's case you combine gritty Westerns with undead horror. Do you consciously draw on the films and fiction from both genres? If so, what are your favourite examples from each?
CL: Yes. In fact, when it comes down to it, I am more influenced by spaghetti western and horror movies than anything. When I watch a cool film, it seems to inspire me to write music. Some of my favorite spaghetti westerns are The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, For a Few Dollars More, Fistful of Lead, Django, and Keoma. As far as horror films, I like so many that it’s hard to list. Movies like The Shining, Return of the Living Dead, original Halloween, The Legend of Boggy Creek, the classic Universal and Hammer films, and on and on.

I also love the old Weird Western comics like Jonah Hex, so that gets thrown into the mix as well.

DM: I found your collaboration with American horror icon Elvira interesting. For those who are unfamiliar with Elvira, could you explain her significance to the American horror landscape? How did you come to work with her and what was it like?
CL: Elvira first started back in the 1980s as a horror host for a television station in Los Angeles.  She did a show called Movie Macabre where she played old horror movies and commented on them during breaks.  Later, she did two feature films which were pretty successful. Anyone familiar with Halloween should recognize her costumes and products; she’s got countless action figures, model kits and other stuff that’s been made in her likeness too. She appears at most major horror conventions these days, and for the last couple of years, she’s been doing a revamped version of her Movie Macabre show which airs on syndicated television stations. Our “Mistress of the Dark” video has been featured on the show and is also available as bonus content on her new Movie Macabre DVDs.

This story behind this is that a few years ago we were playing a horror convention VIP party where Elvira’s manager happened to see us. He loved the band, so he told Elvira - Cassandra - about us. The next day I was hanging out with some friends of mine at the convention and someone ran up and said ‘Elvira wants to meet you, get to your booth’. So I headed back to our guest booth and sure enough, Cassandra came by with her entourage and talked for a few minutes. During that time she suggested I write a new song for her. I had a short meeting with her manager later on and came up with a plan to write a song and maybe shoot a video if it worked out. Two weeks later, I sent them a demo of the song, which they liked. From there we recorded it and decided to do a video. I called up our friend, artist/director Gris Grimly, out in Los Angeles and asked if he wanted to direct. He was excited about the opportunity, so once he was on board we headed out to Hollywood and shot the video. Cassandra was able to hook us up with the Magic Castle out there, so that’s where most of the video was shot.

She was great to work with and she worked really hard on the project, even though obviously it wasn’t a high paying gig. I’ve been a long-time fan, so I’m really honored to have had the opportunity to work with her.

The final product, our Mistress of the Dark DVD, includes the video, a making-of documentary, and some other crazy stuff that Grimly had us shoot. It’s sort of like a bizarre take on the old Hee Haw variety show from the 1970s.  It’s pretty campy, just like you would expect from Elivra.

DM: Possibly my favourite Ghoultown song, 'Drink With the Living Dead', tells a tale of a revenant forced to challenge strangers to drinking contests each night as penance for killing a man to steal his last beer. The way it condenses information and creates atmosphere reminds me of Nick Cave songs such as 'Red Right Hand' and 'Stagger Lee'. How do you set about writing a song driven by narrative?
CL: I’m a fan of Nick Cave and certainly “Drink With the Living Dead” is reflective of his work on the Murder Ballads album. It’s also similar to what Marty Robbins was doing with gunfighter ballads in his classic country songs like “El Paso” and “Big Iron”. The approach I took on “Drink With the Living Dead” was similar to these type songs, but even more-so, modeled after Charlie Daniel’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”. I really wanted to create a song that had a cool narrative story, and being Ghoultown, of course this should obviously involve some kind of undead gunslinger! I first came up with the basic storyline, then started writing the lyric verses. Once I had the meter of the lyrics I was able to strum out some chords that went along with them. After I had the verse melody, I just let the progression guide me into a chorus riff. Once I had those two main elements, I just kept tweaking the lyrics until I got the story like I wanted it. It turned out to be a really long song - over six minutes - which I thought would be a drawback. We almost didn’t include it on the album because we thought nobody would want to listen to a six minute tale about a dead gunfighter in a drinking contest, but we were wrong! The response was huge on that song. Fans loved it.

DM: As main songwriter for the band, at what point do you present your ideas to the other members of Ghoultown? How do they add to the process of fleshing the songs out?
CL: I write all of the songs on an acoustic guitar and then create a rough acoustic demo using my 4-track.  I give this to the guys so they can get familiar with the song before we practice.  Once we get together, we jam the song with everyone adding in the real drums, lead parts, backing vocals, and all that.  The song sounds better when it’s played by the actual band, of course, but essentially there’s not much change between the demo version and the final song. If you listen to my demo for “Drink With the Living Dead,” for example, it’s nearly the same as the final song except the production is not as good and I use a drum machine instead of real drums and an acoustic guitar all the way. Oh, and I hum out the trumpet melodies on the demos, so that’s pretty funny to hear. We always get a big laugh out of that.

DM: Have you created a mythology or alternate Wild West in which to set your songs, or do you prefer to treat each one as a separate take on the core idea of undead in the Wild West?
CL: I don’t have any kind of universal setting or mythology that I think of when writing Ghoultown material. I just sort of stick with a general dark western theme, but that can have a wide range of possibilities from Johnny Cash to horror to hillbillies. And since we’re from Texas, we often fly the flag of our heritage which seems appropriate to the band as well.

DM: I've seen you mention Rob Zombie as a key influence in another interview: the recent video for 'Drink With the Living Dead' uses a similar animated style to the one for Rob's 'Lords of Salem'. Do you see your videos as a way of establishing the visual identity of the band?
CL: Certainly. The image and artwork of Ghoultown are very important elements, so visuals like videos help to complete the package. As a big fan of visuals – like movies, comic book art, etc. – I place a lot of importance on having kick ass artwork and a cool stage presence to go with the music. I think the concept of Ghoultown translates well to artwork. Fans always love our CD covers and posters, and now with the animated type video we’ve been able to translate the band members into something like animated characters. We rarely play live shows anymore due to various circumstances beyond our control, so I’ve made an effort to expand Ghoultown into the realms of virtual characters. Given the nature of the band, it seems like a natural progression.

DM: You have contributed music to several film soundtracks- is this something you’d like to do more of in the future?
CL: It’s been fun to write songs for horror soundtracks. It gives me the chance to write a song based on someone else’s concept or guidelines which is a cool change. I’ve been approached several times about doing actual soundtracks for westerns too, but nothing has come of it so far. So I’m open to the idea, if it comes along.

DM: Furthermore, would you like to create original Weird West stories, either for the page or screen?
CL: I’ve done some of that already. About 10 years ago, I developed a horror western comic series that got picked up by a small comic publisher here in Texas. The comic was also called Ghoultown, but it focused on a cast of completely different characters, not the band members. We appeared occasionally in the background, but it was a stand-alone story on its own. The outlaws were sort of like twisted vampire cowboys, set in a post-apocalyptic old west. The company published two issues of a four-issue mini series and then stopped doing comics. Since I no longer had a publisher, it just sort of died there. I just didn’t have time to pursue comics without a publisher helping me. I had my hands full running our label and doing all the band business, so we sold up the issues we had and that was that.

I’ve thought about trying to bring the Ghoultown concept to the screen by writing a script or something, but so far I haven’t gone down that path. I have a lot of cool ideas about weird west concepts, so maybe at some point I will pursue this further. I know a few guys that do movies, but making any kind of western, especially one that will require a spooky slant to it, is something that will require a substantial budget. If I do something along these lines, I just want to make sure it’s done right, not just some lame, low-budget horror western, ya know.

DM: It’s a shame that you don’t play live much anymore- from the clips I’ve seen on YouTube it looks as though you put on a great show. What are your plans for taking Ghoultown forward?
CL: The live show is definitely a strongpoint of Ghoultown, so it sucks that we can’t bring it to more places. But after 13 years of doing this, it’s become increasingly more difficult to keep pounding the pavement at our own expense. Now that some of the guys have families and can’t just quit jobs at the drop of a cowboy hat, we’ve had to be more selective in our gigs. We can obviously play locally in Texas, and we’ve done short runs to Europe, and one-off gigs that we can fly to, but really those are a drop in a piss bucket compared to all the potential places we’d like to play. We had hoped that having a record company would help boost us to real tours, but that didn’t happen. Now we’re back to doing things on our own again, so the touring opportunities are very limited. When it comes down to it, we don’t make any money at this, so it requires a lot of time, effort and our own cash to keep it going. Nothing that any other band at our level wouldn’t also tell you, so I don’t think we’re any kind of exception. It’s just that it’s really gotten to us in the last few years because we feel that the band is so good and had such great potential, that it’s a shame we can’t bring the show to more fans. But that’s the reality we’ve had to face regardless of our love for the music. At this point, we’re shifting the focus on being a recording band, not so much a performing band.

For the next release, I’m putting together a collection of rare and unreleased tracks that have built up over the years. Newer fans have a hard time getting a hold of the old material, so I thought it would be great to put this on one release with all the tracks remastered. It’s gonna have a few live tracks, and maybe even a new song as well, so probably about 18 to 20 tracks total. I’m even gonna throw in some of my original concept demo recordings from 1998.

DM: Outside of Ghoultown you also write for the horror magazine, Rue Morgue. How did this come about and do you see yourself pursuing a writing career alongside the band?

CL: That started over a year ago when some of the Rue Morgue staff was down here for Texas Frightmare Weekend. I’d met several of the guys before, and they had featured Ghoultown a few times, so we were already friends. Around the time they were in Texas, I had been inspired to write a few articles on horror movies that featured Bigfoot-like monsters, so I just happened to mention that to the guys and showed them an article. They really loved it and so we talked about me contributing to the magazine on a regular basis.  After discovering a mutual fascination with cryptozoo creatures, we came up with the idea for my Monstro Bizarro blog which is featured on their website. I also write for the print magazine doing features, movie reviews, and stuff like that.

I also have a non-fiction book coming out next spring on Anomalist Books, called “The Beast of Boggy Creek: True Story of the Fouke Monster”. The book covers the complete history of the Fouke Monster, a creature said to inhabit the swamplands of southern Arkansas just three hours north of my home in Texas. It was made famous by the Charles B. Pierce classic horror film, The Legend of Boggy Creek, so I cover both the monster and the making of the movie which is really fascinating. It’s a long story as to how I got interested in this subject, but basically I met some people who had been part of the movie and also several credible people who claimed to have seen the creature at one time or another. Once I started looking into the whole subject, I was inspired to write a book on it. If people want to know more about my various writing projects and about the Boggy Creek mystery, just visit my website.

So back to the question about me pursuing a writing career. This is definitely the case. I’m starting work on a second book now, so I hope to continue expanding my professional writing career as I move forward. I will continue to push Ghoultown as much as I can, but I think at this point the future is in the hands of the fans. We’ve created the ultimate weird west monster, so I guess we’ll see if the townsfolk burn it or sustain it.

Friday 11 November 2011

Gutshot Competition Mistake

Due to an error on the Twisted Tales blog post regarding the competition to win copies of P.S. Publishing’s Gutshot, the wrong e-mail address was given out to enter with.

The mistake has now been remedied and entries should be resubmitted to twistedtalesevents@gmail.com; unfortunately entries made prior to today will not be counted. We apologise for the inconvenience but the address previously posted is not owned by Twisted Tales Events. We have tried to contact the erroneous e-mail account and suspect that it may be inactive.

Once again we are sorry for the error and will ensure it does not happen again.

Wednesday 9 November 2011

COMPETITION: Win One of Three Copies of Gutshot

Howdee folks, thanks to the kind possy over at P.S. Publishing, we're able to give three of our readers the chance to win a copy of the new anthology of Weird West stories Gutshot.

As with our last competition, Gutshot is the book which we are basing our next event around, namely Twisted Tales of the Weird West. The event will be held on Friday 25th November, at 6pm, in Waterstone's Liverpool One. It will feature an introduction from Conrad Williams, the editor of Gutshot, as well as readings from three of the authors who have contributed stories to the book:

Gary McMahon

Joel Lane

and Amanda Hemingway

So, if you'd like to win a copy of this beautiful hardback all you have to do is send us an e-mail at twistedtalesevents@gmail.com with the subject line GUTSHOT COMPETITION. P.S. Publishing will post out copies of the book to three winners anywhere in the world so please also include your name and address.

(If you're planning to attend the event and would rather get the copy delivered to Waterstone's please let us know)

Closing date for the competition is Monday 21st November so get those e-mails in. Winners will be selected at random and announced on the Twisted Tales blog, your details will be passed onto P.S. Publishing so that they can dispatch your prize on our behalf. Good Luck.

Tuesday 8 November 2011

NEW EVENT: Twisted Tales of the Weird West

Our next event is a tie-in with P.S. Publishing's new anthology of Weird West stories, Gutshot. Here's the blurb for the book:

The place of the cowboy in fiction is wrapped up in violence and elegiac beauty. Their stories are underpinned by misery and threat. But in among the guns, knives and blood, there was love and hope and glory. The 20 tales between these covers offer a bizarre take on the myths of the Old West. You are as likely to meet a villain from the 21st century as a varmint from the 19th. There are monsters, real and imagined. There are ghosts and gangsters, masked men and marauders. There are showdowns and final sunsets. Above all there is the kind of awe that we all yearn for in our stories. Gutshot is a Smith & Wesson gripped by a skeletal fist, chambers loaded with alien ice, muzzle pointed at your heart . . .

And here's the beautiful poster designed for us by P.S. Publishing based on Gutshot's own superb cover (original art by Caniglia).


So, the details in full:

Friday 25th November, 6-8pm Waterstone's Liverpool One
Tickets are FREE (please reserve in store or on 0151 709 9820)
Introduction from Gutshot's editor, Conrad Williams
Readings from three of the contributors:
Gary McMahon
Joel Lane
Amanda Hemingway
-Plus- a £3 on-the-night-only discount on Gutshot (r.r.p £20)

Yeehawww!

Official Facebook Event: HERE

Monday 7 November 2011

Stephen Volk interviewed by David McWilliam


Stephen Volk is the creator of the award-winning paranormal drama series Afterlife and the notorious BBCTV "Halloween hoax" Ghostwatch. His latest feature film (co-written by director Nick Murphy) is The Awakening, a supernatural mystery starring Rebecca Hall, while his other movie credits include Ken Russell's Gothic and The Guardian, co-written with its director William Friedkin. His short stories and novellas, a selection of which are collected in Dark Corners (Gray Friar Press, 2006), have earned him nominations for the British Fantasy Award, HWA Bram Stoker Award, and Shirley Jackson Award.  www.stephenvolk.net .

The Awakening is will hit cinemas across the UK from 11th November. View the trailer here:



DM: How did you come to write horror professionally?
SV: I grew up loving horror books and films and for some peculiar reason I fell for the idea of writing scripts. In school for my own pleasure I wrote a film script of Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot stories - it just struck me they were very cinematic - but I was also writing horror stories in prose at the time, much like the stories in the books I was reading like the Pan and Fontana books, or Poe. I went to art school, then film school, then got a job in advertising as a copywriter and wrote screenplays at home burning the midnight oil. Through advertising I met a director, Richard Loncraine, who put me on to his agent (this after I'd been writing scripts for about ten years and trying, sometimes succeeding in, getting meetings with the likes of John Boorman or Ridley Scott). I gave this agent, Linda Seifert, three of my spec screenplays (Gothic, Horror Movie and Telepathy) and she sold all three within six months. Which was astonishing, though of the three as yet only Gothic has been made (I now know all too well that simply selling a script is a far cry from it hitting the screen). After Gothic came out I'd begun to get commissions from the likes of TriStar in the States and they were sufficiently time-consuming that I couldn't meet the deadlines and maintain a day job, so I quit the day job. I was worried I might have to go back to advertising in lean times but Sandy Leiberson, Head of Production at Goldcrest at the time gave me an enormous vote of confidence when he said, quite casually, "Oh, you won't need to do that." And, touch wood, I haven't.

DM: What are the different challenges and pleasure of writing for television, film and the page?
SV: Well, everyone who loves film and TV knows the thrill of watching a great story and great acting, a really wonderful gripping narrative. I suppose I'd say: imagine creating that stuff yourself. What could be more exciting? If you love movies you live and breathe them. Having said that, the way they are made, for the writer, is shit. You have no respect and others with far less intellect or talent or even common sense torture your work into becoming a pallid and often idiotic version of what you wrote. It is almost unbearable most of the time... and for the rest of the time it is literally unbearable! Suicidally so. I can't exaggerate how gruelling and unpleasant the process is 99% of the time. The difference with writing fiction for the page is that you are 100% in charge, except for perhaps minor comments or alterations by editors - but these are more like nettle rash compared to the attack of a Bengal tiger in the film world. Really. It's really quite a deeply masochistic profession being a screenwriter. As they said in Sh*t My Dad Says: screenwriting is like riding a merry go round where the horse is fucking you!

DM: Have you ever worked with a director or producer who has contributed positively to your scripts? Has any collaboration illuminated an aspect that had hitherto not been apparent to you?
SV: Yes, sometimes that has happened, definitely, but sad to say it is outweighed by the number of times a script is railroaded and transformed for the worse. It’s not as if it isn’t clear to me when it’s happening: it’s simply not in my power to do anything about it. The system is against the writer, the person who created the thing, which is hugely illogical when you think about it. In films it is often about the director finding their “vision” – which we all know is crap but they have to find something if they’re going to make the bloody thing!  But occasionally producers or directors can be very perceptive indeed. I can think of one who said we should lose a central character, and she was right. And the director of my BAFTA-winning short The Deadness of Dad took what was really a nasty horror-type idea and encouraged me to find in it something strange and tender – something I’ve been trying to recognise and excavate in my work ever since, in fact. I could probably roll off lots of examples of good ideas I’ve got from other people. Case in point: I’ve written a screenplay with another writer, the fantasy novelist Tim Lebbon, and that was a wonderful collaboration because we know each other really well and we weren’t scared of looking stupid, we essentially trust each other – and that’s different from collaborating with non-writers: it’s not a level playing field because they have all the power. Every relationship is different, though. I worked for some time with Richard Loncraine on Gothic and he persuaded me that the creature shouldn’t be a patchwork of scare figures from the stories Byron et al had read, but their actual fears made form. Lesley Manning elevated Ghostwatch simply by pulling it off on a practical level and not imposing any directorial “stamp” at all. Similarly Charles Beeson directed the last episode of series one of Afterlife brilliantly, I thought, and the series wouldn’t have been nearly what it was without the talent of Murray Ferguson, a fantastic producer who’s wonderful on a story and character and pushed me in all the right ways. On the other hand with The Awakening, to be honest, the director Nick Murphy took away my script – which had already moved away somewhat from the Freudian/Victorian sexual ghost story I intended – and rewrote it in the way he wanted. I wasn’t part of that process but I’ve seen the film and I love it, and the “ghost” of everything I wrote is there on the screen. It’s changed, but the same. Weird.  

DM: Ghosts have been a recurring trope within your work. What is their appeal to you as a writer?
SV: I think ghosts as a device are interesting because they afford you the opportunity to externalize character. John Carpenter says all Horror is about an internal emotion, externalized - and a ghost is always absolutely that thing. To me, it always represents something missing or lacking in the character who sees it. A fatal flaw, in other words. Then it's about how the character deals with what he or she sees. I often say that, to me anyway, ghost stories are more about the seer of the ghost than the ghost itself. The audience in Ghostwatch wants to see the ghost because it is a wish-based experience of vicarious pleasure which backfires on them. In Afterlife, the ghosts in the individual stories represent different things but Robert's son Josh is symbolic of his grief and being unable to move on - that's what his relationship with Alison is all about. One person can see it and the other cannot: I find that hugely poignant in human terms and I like ghost stories especially, I suppose, because they illuminate human emotions in a very basic, primal way. In The Awakening the psychical researcher played by Rebecca Hall grapples with denial for a long time before "awakening" to the truth, and I think it's true that drama is not about conflict, but only conflict in as far as it causes something to be revealed about the characters. That's why two people shouting in EastEnders isn't dramatic, though it is conflict: You see, nothing is revealed. A lot happens, but it's empty.

DM: What are your favourite ghost stories, in any medium, of the 21st century thus far?
SV: I wasn’t expecting to, but I rather liked the new BBC version of Whistle and I’ll Come to You, written by Neil Cross. I’m not a bit fan of his cop show, Luther, but I thought this drama with John Hurt was genuinely eerie and had a sense of the uncanny I hadn’t seen on television for a long while. I actually read David Ambrose’s Superstition recently and it’s superb, multi-layered and challenging, even edging into ideas about reality. Amazing stuff. We were going to do it for TV and I was thrilled, then it turned out the movie rights were snaffled up years ago. I liked The Orphanage, despite terrible plot holes, and I enjoyed Graham Joyce’s novel Silent Land, because everything he writes is top notch, full of great ideas but completely absent of showy language.

DM: With Ghostwatch and some of your stories in Dark Corners, you have worked within the subgenre of haunted house stories. As a writer, do you perceive this to offer a different angle on the ghost story? Do haunted houses still focus on illuminating aspects of the characters or does the emphasis shift more towards the ghost’s own history?
SV: I do think it is still about the characters. Maybe the focus being the house you have a wider net, by which I mean the house has existed longer, there are more possibilities, but there’s also the restriction of it being a haunted place – the action is constrained, which is often a good thing. The additional thing, I think in longform storytelling anyway, is that the house almost becomes a character. You saw it in Mark Gatiss’s Crooked House, which was a spoof of The House That Dripped Blood, and you see it in Marchlands, which wasn’t really a ghost story because there was no threat and nothing at stake – the little girl ghost was merely window dressing for a mystery story. I hinted at it in Ghostwatch when the paranormalist talks about “the onion skin” – that Nigel Kneale idea in The Stone Tape, that if you go further and further back who knows what primal evil might be there?

DM: Have you seen the final cut of The Awakening? If so, are you happy with the results?
SV: I’m really happy. I think it’s superb film-making. It’s brilliantly shot and acted and I realised more than ever that my story was about trauma and pain. I’ve honestly never seen a film that communicated pain so effectively. I think in the end it is quite haunting for that reason. Rebecca Hall is superb. They all are, and I hope they get the plaudits they deserve – but of course it’s often the way that a genre film gets treated rather snootily by the critics. But in this case it isn’t out-and-out Horror as such. It’s spooky and scary, but it’s got a level of psychological depth (I hope!) that makes it a bit more unusual. I think it’s a class bit of work, and I don’t say that immodestly, I say it trying to be objective because I wasn’t really involved in the making of it.

DM: What projects are you working on at the moment and have lined up for the near future?
SV: I have a few new spec screenplays out there raising eyebrows I hope, and I am talking to the BBC about a couple of TV series ideas, genre and non-genre. It’s always a long haul to present precisely what they’re after. I also have a few TV projects sniffing around in the USA and Canada (producers have to be very nimble on their feet these days about where they find the finance – everyone has to think outside the box more and more). On the prose side, I have a new novella under consideration which is very special to me, and have some exciting new short stories coming up in The Unspoken (Generation Next), House of Fear (Solaris), Exotic Gothic 4 (PS) and Gutshot (PS). Oh, and a play. Strangely, a play.

DM: Our next event, Twisted Tales of the Weird West (on Friday 25th November), will feature readings from other contributors to Gutshot. Your story in the anthology, ‘White Butterflies’, relocates the Western to the arid landscape of Kazakhstan. Do you agree with Conrad Williams’s claim that, in order for the Western to survive, it needs to be revitalized by shifting away from straightforward tales of the Old West, and that its future lies in generic hybridity?
SV: Is “generic hybridity” just a posh way of saying “mash-up”? I don’t know. I don’t know if Cowboys and Aliens did anything new for the Western except add space ships, but then, I have only seen the trailer: it looks pretty much like Bonanza with added CGI to me. And there have always been comedy-Westerns, so is that “generic hybridity”? The future of a genre is usually “our generation will make it more real”: that is usually the promise in any supposed reinvention of the crime story or cop show or horror, or comedy even, the implicit accusation that previously it has been formulaic. “Till now!” In fact the challenge of genre is usually keeping the things people love and you love yourself as a fan and giving them a new spin. And you do that on instinct. I find I’m always writing ghost stories and always wanting the “new spin” to be psychological depth. Whether I succeed or not, I can’t say, but that’s what I attempt, at least. I’d like to think that rather than putting Jack the Ripper at the OK Corral, the future of the Western is in thinking about what makes something a Western on a deeper, mythic level – a level of landscape and survival and moral law, or lack of it. The TV series Deadwood did that brilliantly, by being both true to history and iconoclastic. Basically in “White Butterflies” I wanted to explore what the Western is if you take away the West. Is it a state of mind or a set or circumstances? I’d wanted to write about the world of these bizarre rocket salvage people for a long time but it was Conrad’s call to arms that focused my mind, and I’m so grateful because without it the story may never have been written and it’s one of my favourites. The question is not how much but how little do you have to add to a story to make it a Western. Maybe only a horse. Maybe only a gun. Once I added a horse and a gun I was halfway there.