In Which I Am Bookended By Comedians

Whilst I haven't blogged much for July I haven't been resting on my laurels. Over the past couple of months I've attended various events promoting various books. Here's a round-up of my activities:

Friday 5th June - Double The Horror

This was an event at the Quad in Derby at which two books were being promoted, both edited by Johnny Mains. These were "Dead Funny", an anthology of horror stories written by comedians (co-edited with Robin Ince), and "Best British Horror 2015" (which, as it turns out, wasn't actually available on the day). I was reading from my short story, "Drowning In Air", which appears in the latter book, alongside Marie O'Regan who featured in Best British Horror 2014, and comedian Rufus Hound who appeared in the Dead Funny anthology.

We got to Derby early and had a bit of a stroll around before chatting with Johnny and organiser Alex Davis in the Quad bar before being joined by Marie and her partner, Paul Kane, together with writers Mark Morris and Robert Shearman. I spoke to Rob at length about being one of the World Fantasy judges this year - a role I had previously undertaken - and also the fact that Rufus Hound wasn't a real dog.

The readings seemed to go well, and Mark and Rob joined us on stage for a Q&A afterwards. Rufus seemed pleased as punch to be with literary folk and - unsurprisingly - his reading was quite a performance.

The following day was a Saturday and Sophie and I cycled the Monsal Trail in one of our favourite parts of the world, the Peak District.

Saturday 13th June - Book Signing

My neo-noir pulp crime novel, "Church Of Wire", was published earlier this year and I had arranged a book signing at the Diss Publishing Bookstore in Norfolk. The day didn't start well with torrential rain, the Diss one-way system, parking too far from the venue and having no change for the car park, and getting soaked going back and forth sorting it out. In contrast, the sales were good - it's surprising how many people don't flinch from paying £10 for a book by an unknown if they're interested in it. Big thanks to the store for putting on the event.

Saturday 11th July - Edge-Lit

Back at the Quad in Derby for Edge-Lit 2015. This is an annual event for writers, readers, and publishers with the emphasis on workshops and 'the business' of writing. We arrived on the Friday afternoon and had a bit of a stroll before a few drinks and then a meal with Terry Grimwood, Ray Cluley, and Ray's partner, Jess. It was a gorgeous evening, and Derby managed to pull off a Mediterranean vibe that was quite impressive.

On the Saturday we had a dealer's table for my books and Fur-Lined Ghettos and we sold steadily throughout the day. I ran a workshop titled "Creating The Short Story: Character, Scene, Conflict" whereby each participant writes separate characters, scenes, and conflicts on pieces of paper which are then all mixed together with each participant then receiving one of each and finding the story that links them. Usually I run this to groups of around 8-10 people, however an astonishing 23 signed up for the event (although 17 attended on time and some latecomers couldn't be accommodated as the task was underway). It seemed to be a success.

Later that afternoon I was also a guest on a panel discussing the short story with Alison Littlewood, Kim Lakin-Smith, and Gav Thorpe (chaired by Adele Waring) which was also quite entertaining.

As usual, I spoke to a host of friends new and old at the event, too many to list here (you know who you all are). And as usual it was fantastic to be surrounded by so many creative types.

Friday 17th July - Best British Horror launch

The official launch of Best British Horror 2015 was scheduled to take place at the Charing Cross Waterstones branch in London. As mentioned above, my story "Drowning In Air", is within the book, and whilst I was not reading this time around I still wanted to attend.

I arrived in London mid-afternoon and had a couple of leisurely drinks with Simon-Marshall Jones of Spectral Press, who is publishing my novella, "The Greens", next autumn. From there we wandered to the venue and chatted with Johnny Mains, Priya Sharma and her partner, Mark, and Victoria Leslie before the event began. The comedian Reece Shearsmith has a story in the book, but his reading consisted of a hilariously filthy reading of an abandoned League of Gentlemen script which included both genitalia and snails. As we lined up for the signing I found myself sitting next to Reece and recited the lyrics to The Resident's song, "Moisture", to him which were not dissimilar to his piece. We also chatted about the series "Inside No 9" (a third is being written as we speak). Charlie Higson also joined us and I mentioned his Norwich musical background (he doesn't get many requests to sing 'who stole my bongos' any more).

Best British Horror launch photos by Steve Shaw

After the signing session there were readings from Alison Moore, John Llewellyn Probert, Priya Sharma and Stephen Laws before the chance for more chat and drinks. Funnily enough there were no Edge-Lit overlaps among the writers present and again I had the chance to chat with friends old and new before heading for the train.

All four events reaffirmed my belief in the human race. And interesting these four were unusually - for me - bookended by comedians. I imagine my involvement in the world of comedy will end with this brief dalliance, but just in case I'm called upon here's my favourite joke:

Q: What did one snowman say to the other?

A: Can you smell carrot?

I'll get my coat.

Bothersome

My short story, "Bothersome", has recently been published in Darkest Minds, an anthology published by Dark Minds Press. As usual I'm blogging about the gestation of the story for those who might be interested. There could be spoilers as part of this post.

I actually wrote "Bothersome" about four years ago. It's one of those odd stories which can often be hard to place in anthologies/magazines because it doesn't easily fall into any particular genre, however when I saw a call for submissions themed around 'crossing a border' I knew I'd give Darkest Minds a shot. In my day job I handle incoming social service calls and one day I was struck by a conversation with someone whose mother had dementia. He commented that "she gets lost even in her own room". I thought this concept was superb (as well as being incredibly disturbing), and decided to explore it in fiction. Because I wanted to write the story from the main character's perspective I didn't want to explicitly state that she has dementia which probably makes the story a little difficult to access for readers if they don't want to do some work. I also thought I'd make my protagonist a retired scientist so that some aspects of her thought processes linger in a past where - whilst still muddled - sparks of genius remain. Ultimately the story is a metafictional fantasy vs reality piece which hints at memory and lost opportunity, of how intelligence can be whittled away until even going to the toilet becomes problematic, of how we might end up prisoners of ourselves, of how we can cross borders within ourselves.

I remember a red pencil. HB. Stem hexagonal rather than circular. With a point of graphite at one end and an eraser at the other. I journey along the pencil. From the graphite making marks on paper at one end of the journey to the eraser removing them at the other.

Darkest Minds also includes fiction from Glen Krisch, Robert Mammone, Clayton Stealback, Ralph Robert Moore, Mark West, Gary Fry, Tom Johnstone, Benedict J Jones, David Surface, Tracy Fahey and Stephen Bacon.

A Childhood In Books

I'm glad that I'm a writer - but most of all I'm glad that I'm a reader. Sometimes I wonder about the nature/nurture question. Do I write because I read a lot, or did I gravitate to reading because somewhere inside me there lurked a fledgling writer? I guess it's something I will never know (and indeed, will never need to know), but thinking over this question has led to this blog post. These are the pivotal books in my reading/writing journey which I believe influenced and nurtured my writing journey in my childhood years.

I won't start with picture books, suffice to say that I remember liking Dr Suess, the Meg & Mog series, and two books which I remember being read to me repeatedly by my mother, "Goodnight, Little Bear" and "The Runaway Kangaroos". I adored both these books and still have them (although I had to re-buy the latter online).

My first memory of a 'proper' book is my aunt arriving with Enid Blyton's "Five On A Treasure Island". I have vivid memories of the cover, of leafing through the pages on my bed, and feeling some excitement as to the contents. I don't recall reading anything of that length before, and I'm sure I read it quickly - followed by the remainder of the series. Blyton's books instilled a sense of adventure, mystery-solving fun, and an almost-punk notion that if you put your mind to it you could do anything (to the extent that you could be a child solving crimes).

I progressed through some of the other Blyton series, and quite liked the Adventurous Four and the Barney Mystery series but wasn't keen on the Secret Seven. My favourite of them all, however, were the Five Find-Outers. There was something about the dynamic between these five which really appealed - and perhaps because they seemed less known than the other series they felt exclusive to me. Thankfully these don't appear to have been rewritten for the modern age, as I've noticed in a recent edition that one of the children has retained their nickname of Fatty.

From Enid Blyton my next great find was the Three Investigators Series. 'Presented by Alfred Hitchcock' these books featured three friends, Bob Andrews, Pete Crenshaw and Jupiter Jones who in the tradition of Blyton also had crimes and mysteries to find and solve. Unlike Blyton, many of these mysteries had a supernatural element, and this was probably my first encounter with this genre which might well have influenced my own fiction. Whereas the supernatural was debunked at the end of the story, this weaving together of reality and fantasy greatly impressed me (unlike many of my contemporary writers I didn't read the Pan Horror Series and have never read Lord of The Rings or the Narnia novels).

Compiling this list it seems interesting that the older I became the fewer protagonists I needed:

Five Find-Outers
Four (Adventurous)
Three Investigators
Two (Adventurers).

My next find were Hal and Roger, the two protagonists in Willard Price's Adventure Series. These were sons of a respected animal collector who had taken time off school to assist in capturing animals for zoos and nature parks. Whilst this flies in the face of modern conservation, these books continued my thirst for adventure but also gave me an appreciation of wildlife which I respect to the present day. They also gave me a passion for travel. I must have stopped reading this series in 1979 when I was twelve, because I never progressed beyond "Tiger Adventure" and I remember it being published with a completely different cover to the rest of the series which annoyed my sense of continuity.

My passion for animal welfare was further developed through the following two books. "Freedom For A Cheetah" I remember borrowing repeatedly from my local library and "Bichu The Jaguar" was a book I had at home. In both titles, the animal/human relationship is considered more from the animal's point of view than in the Willard Price series. Perhaps it's no coincidence that I've often featured animals in my stories ("Slender Lois, Slow Doris", "Spilt Beaver", "The Honey Badger's Child", "Monochrome Tiger").

I view the above two books as a transition between my childhood and adolescent reading. Whilst I remember picking up several Gollancz yellow SF books from my library around that age, and also recall some of Asimov's robot stories, nothing else has stood out. Perhaps I remember books in a series more simply because they were in a series, or maybe a series appealed to me due to character development. Either way, around the age of fourteen I was devouring Ian Fleming's James Bond books and also Agatha Christie (both books usually featuring one main character, as per the above 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 countdown).

I would have come to James Bond from the movies and then seeing the books in my local store, but there is also no doubt that the covers greatly appealed, particularly the 1970 Panther Triad editions featuring semi-clothed girls straddling giant guns. I remember becoming aware for the first time of eroticism in fiction, but also the potential for violence. Christie, in comparison, was a calmer, more traditional voice; but with both writers - as indeed, most of the above - the plot revolved around explaining a mystery (as an aside, I usually read Christie in large print as our library had the best selection in those heavy black and white covers, but I loved their paperback cover designs such as the one below). Understanding that the world might not quite be what it seems is just as relevant in detective novels as it might be in science fiction, fantasy or horror. And whilst some of my contemporaries might be aghast at how little read I am in those genres (I have never read Tolkien, never read King), I feel richly grounded in fiction which attempts to find understanding amongst confusion, where the difference between what appears to be real and what is real are sometimes only a parlour conversation away.

After the Fleming and Christie I began to turn my eye to other books in our library. I think I was aware I was reading above my 'expected' age group, and like the Bond I was occasionally attracted to books from the cover alone. I remember a brief Kingsley Amis period, where "Take A Girl Like You" and "I Want It Now" fed my brain. But the remainder have been forgotten. I was about to start experiencing a more direct approach to reading, fuelled by academia. It's fair to say that for a while the fun was taken out of it. The age of innocence dead.

When I was fifteen I took a General Studies class where I was introduced to 'proper literary' adult fiction and I voraciously read Kafka, Dostoyevsky, Sartre, Camus and Orwell, in addition to the obligatory "Brave New World" and "Lord Of The Flies" in English classes. From then on, the pulsating vortex of potential reads swirled around me, and I read more and more and more. Currently, I have a list of over 250 books on my reading list awaiting my attention, and I buy all the time, but I think those years from around 8 until 15 were the formative ones developing myself both as a reader and a writer, and perhaps unsurprisingly given the list indicate why I've turned to crime.

 

Church Of Wire

Last week saw publication of my new novel, "Church Of Wire" so I thought I'd blog about how the novel was created in the hope of stirring some interest. There will be spoilers.

"Church Of Wire" is the second in the series of my crime novels featuring Mordent, a PI who began life in short stories and made his first full-length appearance in "The Immortalists" last year. Mordent is a very easy character for me to write. Like most of us he's a complex individual with conflicting moral concerns, but also he's very simple. It's the dichotomy between the complex and simple which fascinates me - both in my own life and in art. It often seems to me that people like to pigeonhole themselves with a fixed sense of morality and identity, whereas in reality the opposite is the case. I believe - for example - it is possible to hold two conflicting opinions simultaneously and equally believe in both. This is why I feel comfortable in describing Mordent as being complex yet simple.

I had the title for a while without being sure whether to use it for a novel or a short story, however after completing "The Immortalists" I realised the feel of the title very much fitted into the neo-noir books I had begun to write. The main thread of the story is also something that was bubbling at the back of my mind for some time: I was going to write about a serial killer who targeted survivors of previous serial killer attacks.

It seemed such a neat concept that I wondered why no one had done it before - this is where the comment box below comes in useful as you can list everyone else who has.

As well as this thread to the novel I knew I had to work out how the Church of Wire fitted into the story. I'm not a religious person, so I felt I needed a different kind of church for this book. A few years ago I wrote a story, "Caravan Of Souls", which hinged on the biblical idea that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. In that story I followed this through with the suggestion that whilst God was resting on the seventh day he slept and dreamt - and that those dreams also formed part of creation (the weird stuff that exists that we find hard to understand). I decided to expand on this and utilise it as a concept for the Church Of Wire to peg its beliefs onto.

All I then had to do was to tie the two strands together (or not, as the case might be), weave it with noir, and have my regular ensemble cast (Mordent, PI; Hubie, informer; Martens, mortician; Kovacs, police chief and Morgan, bar owner) interact with a few suitably named villains (Reflective Tony, The Frame) and a love interest, Jessica. Not forgetting Astrid, Mordent's new bubblewrap girl.

Paul Finch, author of the Heck series of novels including "Dead Man Walking", says: Beautiful prose, a razor sharp eye for detail, and chills aplenty. Hook rebirths the noir, but with a very hard darkness and a disturbing air of mystery.

The book is available in both paperback and on kindle. Naturally kindle is cheaper. Please consider checking out a copy, as the success of this book will determine whether the next two books in the same series are commissioned and it's too early for Mordent to die a death. Whereas the book can be read as a standalone novel, here are the links to "The Immortalists" in both paperback and kindle if you wish to be particuarly generous.

The official blurb is as follows:

Ex-cop, Mordent, is an irascible, anachronistic PI with a noir sensibility and a bubblewrap fetish. Hired by the enigmatic Isabelle Silk to unearth dirt on a business associate, he becomes involved with Jessica – a floozy with a fake Southern Belle accent – and hunts the Residue Killer: a twisted individual intent on despatching survivors of previous serial killer attacks.

All the trails lead to the Church of Wire. Yet does this surrealist religious sect really lie at the heart of the killings?

Church of Wire is the second in a series of exciting crime novels putting a neo-noir twist on the genre conventions of bums and dames, corruption and perversion, and cops and informers; all played out on rain-soaked streets amid a shadow-filled city.

Praise for "The Immortalists": ‘The interplay between Mordent and the other characters is a delight to read, as is the prose throughout with its hard boiled sensibilities, short sentences that cut like diamond on glass and metaphors as apposite as they are off kilter.’ Peter Tennant, Black Static

A Life In Plastic

My short story, "A Life In Plastic", has recently been published in Strange Tales V from Tartarus Press, edited by Rosalie Parker. As usual I'm blogging about the gestation of the story for those who might be interested. Be aware there may be spoilers if you haven't read it.

This was one of the few occasions where the title was changed after I wrote the story. The original title, "The Plasticity of Identity", I took from a review of another story, "Drowning In Air", which appeared in Strange Tales IV. The reviewer being Peter Tennant of Black Static. As soon as I read the phrase I realised I wanted to write something with that title, but after Rosalie accepted the story for publication she suggested I change it as it seemed a little clumsy. "A Life In Plastic" is probably a clearer representation of what the story is about.

This piece is one of a series of Japanese stories I've been writing over the past few years. I've found Japan to offer a wealth of story fodder, and in this case part of the story is based on the island of Okunoshima, an island where Japan produced poison gas in the second world war which has since become a haven for rabbits.

The plastic in the title is two-fold. Firstly, as a metaphor for the disconnect the main character has with emotion, particularly with regards to his estranged young daughter, but also with a preoccupation he finds with a window-dresser who resembles how he considers his daughter might look when she grows up. There is a gradual transformation of himself into a mannequin as the story progresses, as he decides to distance himself from his daughter after holidaying with her on Okunoshima.

To give a flavour of the story, here is an extract:

...some people were interested in speculating what might happen should a mannequin come alive, but for Oki the reverse were true. He wondered what it would be like to be the mannequin. he couldn't imagine his emotions being any more distanced than they already were, yet would like to try.

There is already a review online from Des Lewis: "It is a wonderful and eventually disturbing description of unrequited fatherly love for a daughter who is somewhat estranged from him by his marital unfruition, then his taking her, when given access, as a small child on holiday to an island where the only entertainments are a golf course and a Poison Gas Museum, and later his visualising her as an older girl or woman in the form of a window-dresser in a shop window whom he obsessively watches dressing mannequins..."

Finally, I wrote "A Life In Plastic" whilst listening to "Cyber Trance" by the Japanese female singer Ayumi Hamasaki on repeat.

Strange Tales V also includes stories by Charles Wilkinson, L.S. Johnson, Steve Rasnic Tem, Jacurutu:23, John Howard, Elise Forier Edie, Douglas Penick, Paul Bradley, David Rix, Mark Valentine, Yarrow Paisley, Tara Isabella Burton, Andrew Apter, Nathan Alling Long, Tom Johnstone, David McGroarty. It can be purchased here.

The Stench Of Winter

My short story, "The Stench Of Winter", has just been published online in the inaugural issue of Shirley magazine and as usual I'm blogging a few comments as to how the story developed. Be aware there may be spoilers for those yet to read the work.

A few years ago I was aware of a news item about a girl's body that had been found on the Queen's Sandringham estate. I can't recall the exact details, but I certainly remember that the way it was reported seemed to suggest that because she appeared to be Eastern European then it didn't really matter. I'm sure this wasn't the intention in the article, but there was a sniff of it there. For me, it seemed all the more tragic because of this.

I began to wonder who would care to investigate a death if the authorities didn't. The opening to the story puts it quite succinctly:

The body was found at the edge of the woods in a shallow grave littered with the wetness of mulched leaves and a solitary crisp packet.

It had been there some time. Perhaps six months. It could be this girl. Or it could be that girl. They said. It could have been any girl. The newspapers thought it didn't matter because she was blonde and probably foreign and could be any one of a half-dozen blonde, missing, foreign girls.

But it did matter. It mattered to the girl.

And if no one else was interested, then she had to be.

I wanted a delicate balance in the story, for the girl to investigate her own death but through the veil of past and present, a remembering of her being trafficked to the UK as a sex worker, but also warm memories of her family and Christmastime. And I also wanted her experience to be fragmented. Whilst she might be considered a ghost it isn't the case that anyone can see her, she can't affect anything, the baddies don't get their comeuppance and they remain unaware of her continued existence. Tragic as that might be, I thought that approach to be more realistic than a standard vengeance story. Real life (and death) just don't have happy endings.

The story can be read in its entirety here. Please comment if you've read and enjoyed it.

Shirley magazine also contains stories by Kai Maristed and Clyde Liffey.

The Frequency of Existence

My short story, "The Frequency of Existence", has recently been published in Black Static #45 and as usual I'm blogging about the gestation of that story. There may be spoilers for those who have yet to read it.

This piece is a curious one for me as I can't quite remember how it came about. I know I 'found' the title whilst flicking through a library reference book in one of my day jobs, seeing the phrase, and jotting it down. I remember deciding on the name Valerie at random when writing the first paragraph and then remembering Valerie Solanas (who had attempted to kill Andy Warhol) and then extrapolating that character into my character's life as I continued writing. I remember being interested in flicker books and the spaces in between, and the idea of a flicker book (or series of photographs) depicting the frequency of existence. But this is one of those pieces whose story develops as it is being written, where I had no plot in mind and only afterwards I can see it was about the fractal nature of relationships and how we grant some moments in life a power and potency which they may not, in fact, have. How we linger over broken relationships and find it difficult to move on.

Re-reading it for edits just before publication and then again following publication I've found that this story - which I can barely remember writing - actually packs an incredible emotional punch for me. When writing short fiction - which is usually fiction centred around one idea - I think the main aim is to do that idea justice. In this story, I genuinely think I nailed it.

I once set up the camera on a tripod and took repeated images of us making love by pressing a rubber bulb, yet the pull of the mechanism had altered the angle and when the images were developed they depicted only a wooden headboard over which shadows merged and reformed on a dirty white wall. It was my best work.

Normally I make a note of what music I play on repeat whilst writing a story, but in this instance I haven't done so. Incidentally, this year I've been creating a separate blog with the hope of posting one photograph a day (a 365-photo project). I've also titled that The Frequency of Existence.

Black Static #45 also contains new dark fiction by Steve Rasnic Tem, S.P. Miskowski, Laura Mauro, Stephen Hargadon, Emily B. Cataneo, Cate Gardner, and Danny Rhodes. The cover art is by Richard Wagner, and interior illustrations are by Richard Wagner, and Ben Baldwin. The usual features are present, including the regular comment columns by Stephen Volk (Coffinmaker's Blues) and Lynda E. Rucker (Notes From the Borderland); Blood Spectrum by Tony Lee (DVD/Blu-ray/VoD reviews); Case Notes by Peter Tennant (book reviews), which includes an extensive interview with Helen Marshall.