tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-22621130445814304242024-03-05T05:34:56.983+00:00ARCHIVAL MUTTERINGSA collection of interviews, articles, reviews and other writings by David J Howe.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comBlogger124125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-1417705388168297432020-09-04T17:05:00.002+01:002020-09-04T17:05:13.328+01:00The DOCTOR WHO Pinball<p>The following is an article commissioned for and published in the third of the Update Volumes of HOWE'S TRANSCENDENTAL TOYBOX, which is long out of print ...</p><p>Pinball Wizard</p><p>In 1992 Bally Williams released, to date, the only <i>Doctor Who</i> arcade pinball machine. William Pfutzenreuter worked on the game for Bally Williams and here he shares his memories of developing something which has become unique in the field of <i>Doctor Who</i> merchandise and collectibles.</p><p>The Start</p><p>I was a games programmer for Bally Williams, and after about ten years working at this, I was given the opportunity to be the ‘Game Designer’ of a pinball game. All I had to do is come up with a game idea and ‘sell’ it to management. Many sleepless nights and several unsold ideas later, one of my colleagues, Ken Fedesna, knowing that I was a <i>Doctor Who</i> fan (and I suspect he was too!), suggested that I design a game using that as the subject. So, I went back to the drawing board and designed using sketches the main features and the game story. </p><p>For the story, I did not want to adapt something which had already been seen on television, so I tried to come up with something from scratch. I have always liked time paradoxes, and I wanted to get all the Doctors back together again (like the stories ‘The Three Doctors’ and ‘The Five Doctors’ on television). I also wanted there to be a companion for each Doctor, and I wanted to include speech samples from each Doctor and companion. Every story needs an enemy and so I added the Daleks and (my favourite) the latest incarnation of the Master (played on television by Anthony Ainley). The story I came up with was that the Daleks and the Master had compressed time on Earth, hence the slow continental drift back to the one large continent Pangaea, but the Doctors (who visit Earth a lot at different times), escape, only to be flung into different situations represented by different areas of the playfield. </p><p>This was the initial concept of including a 3-level ‘mini-playfield’ known as the Time Expander. Management approved the game and the BBC (for the <i>Doctor Who</i> show) and Terry Nation (for the Daleks) were approached for licensing. After the licenses were preliminarily agreed, the project became official and a team was assembled to make Doctor Who the pinball. Since it was a licensed game it would be released by Bally as they did all the licensed products, and it would be put into production following the development and release of games for <i>The Addams Family</i> and <i>Black Rose</i>. </p><p>The Team</p><p>Once the project had been approved by management, the team members could be assembled. The core team comprised a Mechanical Engineer (Zofia Bil), a Graphic Artist (Linda Deal), a Sound Engineer (Jon Hey), and a Dot Matrix Display Artist (Scott ‘Matrix’ Slomiany), all of whom were assigned to work for me. There were some others, like Roger Sharpe from marketing and my contact for Licenses, plus a lot of other people helping. Next came the task of explaining what I wanted each of the team members to do, and educating them on 26 years of <i>Doctor Who</i>. </p><p>The Mini-Playfield</p><p>Zofia started on the ‘mini-playfield’ from my sketches. Her task was to design it with the smallest footprint possible, but to make it ‘indestructible’ and still not cost a fortune. Several motor designs were suggested, and a few were simulated, but Zofia liked the offset cam. The motor was chosen to last a long time. It was strong enough to break pencils (fingers would be an easier target) and I even demonstrated it (please do not do this at home!) for management. This concerned a lot of people and we had to find a way to make it safe. Just opening the coin door (doing so cut the power to the solenoids and mini-playfield motor) was not good enough. So a switch was added to detect the presence of the playfield glass, and I programmed the machine to only move the mini-playfield if the glass was present. We even added an obnoxious alarm sound, a dot matrix display warning ‘sticker’, and speech in two languages (English & German) warning the operator. </p><p>The Artwork (Part One)</p><p>I gathered up all my <i>Doctor Who</i> collection (magazines, books, video tapes) and brought it to work. Linda look through all of it. We also had access to the BBC Archives, but this took several weeks to get hold of images, and despite being given descriptions of the poses Linda desired, she was never too happy with what we were sent. The backglass is perhaps the most important part of the machine – it advertises it and needs to draw people to it in the arcade. For the <i>Doctor Who</i> backglass I gave Linda the requirement that all seven Doctors, the TARDIS and the Master had to be featured. She also added in the Daleks and the Doctor Who logo had to be in there as well. The BBC presented the requirement that the faces had to be all the same size (so that no one was more important that the other). This somewhat restricted the design, so she looked at my collection and came up with a design of the seven Doctors around the <i>Doctor Who</i> logo. On the bottom left was a silhouette of the TARDIS, and on the bottom right was a silhouette of the Master flanked by the Daleks. Once approved by myself and the management, she made a full sized colour magic marker drawing. This was then sent out for the approval of Bally and the BBC. </p><p>While this was happening, the playfield and cabinet was being designed. After that was done and sent out for approval. The real painted backglass was started and completed, then twelve translates (temporary backglasses made by a quick process to see the colours and art) were make for the twelve test machines. During all of this, Linda designed the cabinet artwork, the magic motion artwork, the playfield artwork, the playfield plastics art, the playfield stickers, and an assortment of free handouts (bumper stickers, coasters, and so on). </p><p>The magic motion piece was added to the Bally cabinet at the last minute and we didn’t know exactly when they would arrive to be fitted to the machines. So, a back-up piece in standard plastic was made. As it turned out, this was not needed, and so it became another free handout.</p><p>The Playfield Design</p><p>While all this was going on, it was up to me to start laying out the playfield. I found a discarded drafting table in the hallway. AutoCAD was still not really popular at Williams back in ’92, it and the computers with all the extra memory needed to run it were very expensive. So I dragged the drafting table into my office and picked up a pencil. I rapidly found that I was a better programmer than a draftsman, but I did have a lot of help from other game designers (who always drafted their playfields themselves! I had been missing out!). So the first playfield was designed and built, but the play action was somewhat stunted. Shots did not work, you could not hit a thing, it was no fun at all. Williams (rightly so) rejected it and I was gloomily beginning to think that the game was going to be cancelled.</p><p>Well, I dragged my ego down to Roger Sharp’s office and dumped my ‘problems’ onto his lap. He gave me a pep speech about his game design days, but we still had to get the game sorted out. So he suggested that I ask Barry Oursler, one of the more experienced designers, if he would co-design the game with me. So I left Roger and made a bee-line directly to Barry’s office (I had programmed many of his games) and asked him. He accepted, and now it was time to convince Williams’ management that the game was still viable. It took them a little while, but they accepted and Barry took my ideas and gadgets, added a few of his own, and made a real game. </p><p>Once we had the basic design, then a ‘white wood’ version of the playfield was made. This is the playfield without artwork, just wood. It’s used so that the designer can check the shots to see if there is good action. If something needs to be moved, then he will fill the holes and drill new ones to move ramps and/or posts. Sometimes a white wood gets so full of holes that another white wood is made, and so on until you have it right. Once the game play is working, then the design is ‘locked down’ and the playfield artwork can be started. Of course, even the best of playfields can change later in the design … Much to the horror of the playfield artist!</p><p>Barry’s play action worked great! Perhaps too good … the ‘sonic boom’ ramp shot (left flipper to right ramp) was so popular and so easy (for the Williams game designers at least) to loop the ball forever. I had to modify the rule and on the tenth loop, divert the ball, give the player a bonus, and force the player to use the right flipper with the diverted ball. Of course, a skilled player would use the right flipper to shoot under the left ramp. This would trade flippers back to the left one as a setup for the right ramp. But this did slow them down a bit … </p><p>The Dotwork</p><p>Scott ‘Matrix’, the designer of the ‘dotwork’ images, also had access to my collection of <i>Doctor Who</i> photos and tapes. I originally wanted each ball in play to represent one part of a <i>Doctor Who</i> episode, so that starting a game would start at Part 1. But I also wanted all the different video effects and themes for all the Doctors. This would be selectable depending upon the selected Doctor at the start of playing a ball. However, just creating one theme (and there was more to a game than the start and end of a ball in play) in a low resolution dot matrix display was time consuming. So I abandoned the multiple themes idea (the sound system had limits too) and stuck to just one theme. </p><p>While Scott was working on the display effect he discovered that faces were staring back at him from the <i>Doctor Who</i> titles for the early Tom Baker stories. He had been staring at the <i>Doctor Who</i> titles for quite some time, trying to imitate the effect in a low resolution dot matrix display. Quite to his surprise, a face was staring back at him! These can be seen on the right side, half way from the top on the end credits, and on the starting credits, it’s upside down on the left side on both the top and bottom half. Scott came and found me and asked about the faces. ‘What faces?’ I asked! </p><p>There were many other visual effects in the pinball game. Multiball was the most complicated, both visually and with integrated speech, because it involved telling a story during the play of game controlled by the player and not by the actors. If you think the actors have it tough trying to talk while running down a corridor, try getting hit by flippers, rolling on the ground, bouncing off posts, and talking, all in the middle of all those sounds and changing rules! The game also interacted with the player – as you removed Daleks or Davros from the mini-playfield, they all started to panic.</p><p>As mentioned, there was a lot more to the dot matrix display than just titles, and one of the more fun elements was the ‘video mode’. The concept was simple: a Doctor was running away from a Dalek that was chasing him. But there are obstacles in his path that the Doctor must jump over. The narrow obstacles only need one flipper to be pressed, the wider obstacles require two flippers to be pressed at the same time. If the Doctor does not jump over an obstacle, or he jumps into an obstacle, he trips and falls and loses (the Dalek catches him, and this obstacle pattern repeats on the next video mode). If the Doctor does not trip, and reaches his TARDIS, he is safe and he leaves. There are some extra points if you jump into the TARDIS, rather than run into it. And points accumulated on each successful video mode until the ‘end of the wave’ (multiple video modes). Remember that the playfield multiplier could also multiply this score, and the timer for the playfield multiplier was temporarily stopped during video mode.</p><p>All seven Doctors (depending upon who you are at the time you start video mode) could run in the video mode, however, I only had speech from Sylvester McCoy, so … every other time (I think) the Doctor made it into the TARDIS, there was funny line that McCoy would say. I loved the line that went, ‘(Exhausted Breathing) I do not mind the guns or running or a Dalek or two, it’s the obstacles that I hate!’</p><p>Of course a Dalek would not dream of jumping over an obstacle. He merely blasts it to tiny bits. But … at the end of a video mode wave, too many Doctors have escaped. And the Dalek must report his failure. This is something that Daleks do not accept. We had a lot of fun here and there are several of these scenes, each getting worse. I do not remember them all, just the final one because I could not decide what to do. So I gave in to the ‘big gun’ theory and blasted the Dalek to atoms.</p><p>My favourite video effect is the entering of the player’s ‘High Score to Date’ initials. It came from a silly idea: that all Time Lords already have your initials and score in their record book. All you do is flip the pages until you find your score and initials. Remember that they know the future. But then, has the future really been recorded in this book accurately? You’d better double check …</p><p>Another element of the dot matrix display was the cow. Yes, there is a cow. In case you did not know, Williams has been putting cows in the dot matrix displays for a long time. The trick is to find what makes it appear. I did not want to do it (I am serious about my <i>Doctor Who</i>!). But Scott made me … He was fascinated with the Transmat, and knew my pinball rules about charging the Transmat when the jet bumpers were hit, and if the charge is big enough, then there was a rule to Transmat in a Doctor’s helper. Of course you can activate the Transmat without there being enough power, and every so often (actually rarely) a cow’s head would appear wearing a Tom Baker hat on its head. Sorry about that Tom … </p><p>Sounds and Music </p><p>John Hey had the job of reproducing the sound effects and theme music from <i>Doctor Who</i>. My video tapes of the TV show helped him a lot here and the sound effects were easy for John to reproduce by ear, or at least get close. Some of it was digitised from my video tapes. However, the theme music was a problem. I originally wanted all the different themes to play depending upon which Doctor was selected in the game. But just doing the Tom Baker theme took weeks, and a lot of space was going to be taken up by speech. So we ended up just using the one theme. With uninterrupted music from ball to ball (which was a first for Williams), each ball is supposed to represent one part of this <i>Doctor Who</i> story … and you do not have to wait until next week to play the next ball!</p><p>Somewhere along the way I asked the BBC for a copy of the sheet music to the Tom Baker theme. It was then that I found out that there apparently is no sheet music for the score.</p><p>As mentioned, the speech was to take up a lot of space on the chip. My original art concept was have as many companions and Doctors as possible but unfortunately we found that there were not enough rules and playfield available for everybody. But for everyone who made it onto the playfield, I planned to include at least one line of speech. I actually wrote up about three lines on average for all the companions, and more for each of the Doctors, the Daleks, and the Master. Williams management started with an open mind, but it always comes back to the money. Williams would have to locate all the actors, get them to/from a recording studio, and pay everyone something. At the time this payment was not very much for a given pinball, and usually there was only one actor involved. I was dividing the pot by about 20. Well, it was a nice idea while it lasted.</p><p>So a decision had to be made and at the end of the day, we would provide speech for just three characters: the seventh Doctor played by Sylvester McCoy, some Dalek speech, and the Master as played by Anthony Ainley. We tracked the actors down, they were both available and both agreed … without seeing a script, which was handy as it wasn’t written yet.</p><p>Let me explain that I did not talk to the actors directly. I first talked to Williams marketing (i.e. Roger Sharpe), who talked to an international licensing company located in California, who talked to the BBC in England, who talked to the actors agents, who talked to the actor. This was six layers of communication and it took a while to arrange. The actors probably never knew my name.</p><p>Now it was my turn to go back to the drawing board. Remember, that not only is there a certain amount of recording time that can fit on an EPROM, (and I was not going to waste a millisecond!) but it uses lossy compression that trashes the quality of speech. (S’s and T’s are not heard, C’s turn into H’s … I always remember the arcade game Sinistar (released by Williams in 1982) and hearing the phrase ‘Run, Howard!’, it was really ‘Run, Coward!’) This is another reason why we always ask for more than we can put in a game, because some of it ends up as not understandable. I quickly re-wrote all the multi-ball speech so that all three would interact in the game, and added more funny lines for video mode, and a few variations. I only had one chance to get the speech and get it correct. And I am a better programmer than a writer.</p><p>The script for Sylvester turned out to be about one and a half pages, mostly instructional with some of the funny lines. The script for the Daleks was less than one page, and I had their usual ‘kill’, ‘destroy’ and so on with a little dialogue and some funny lines for the video mode. The Master ended up with about three pages of script, because I found it easy to write for him. Armed with the scripts, John Hey quickly packed his bags and went from Chicago to England to record the actors. All this happened very, very quickly. Schedules for each of the actors was tight and on short notice, and I am sorry to say that all did not go well. Even today, I am not sure what happened, but Anthony did not record the Master speech. Panic gripped Williams …</p><p>The Dalek speech was the last to be recorded. Many ideas were discussed, including using a sound-alike Master (after all there was another actor playing the Master before Ainley). John Hey was still in England and a suggestion came (I think from England) that the person recording the Dalek voice could also do, and was willing to do, a Davros voice. Well, back to the scripts I went and super-quickly re-wrote the Master speech into a Davros speech. Then we faxed the new text to John. Both voices were recorded! We had our speech!</p><p>But the Master issue was not over yet. Rumours were flying at super sonic speeds, and there was talk of removing all traces (playfield and backglass artwork, dot matrix, etc) of the Master from the game. After a couple of weeks this died down to giving the Master a face lift on the playfield, making him look like the first Master, as played by Roger Delgado on television. And now instead of the Doctors battling the Daleks with a surprise appearance of the Master as the real villain. Davros was now the surprise villain. At the time, with the Bally backglass, he truly was a surprise … Davros was not on the Bally backglass at all and the Master was only on it as a silhouette. More weeks later, sanity returned at Williams. John knew that I missed the Master character and so he recorded a sound alike voice for Master’s laugh. That I put on the outlanes and a few other places in the game. More weeks went by, and I was talking to Roger Sharpe and told him of the sound alike laugh in the game. He showed me a letter from Anthony written in his own hand, which explained that, basically, he didn’t feel that the £1000 being offered for the recording was enough, and that there wasn’t enough time between his seeing the script and the recording date to effectively negotiate for more. </p><p>When John Hey returned with the speech tapes. Both Sylvester and the Dalek/Davros speaker had added a few more of their phrases on top of my scripted ones. This added a nice personality touch that I missed, so we used them in the game as well. All the scripts were recorded onto a digital audio tape (DAT) machine by John and then the good ‘takes’ grabbed using Sound Designer II on a Mac before being converted through a Williams custom built CVSD (Continuously Variable Slope Delta) encoder. We experimented with the Daleks’ voices. They sounded bad enough to start with, much less after trying to get them correct following CVSD sampling. We ended up using the ones recorded in England. The music was recreated on the Williams Yamaha FM chip sound system by John as well. He reported that it was a real challenge making FM synthesisers sound like older analogue synthesers. The TARDIS sound was sampled and played directly from the DAC (Digital to Analogue Converter). All the rest of the effects (except the drum hits which were also DAC) were created on a Yamaha FM. </p><p>The New BackBox Feature </p><p>The Dalek Head on top the backbox was an after-thought. The game had a great white wood playfield, it was playable with a lot of rules and interest, the artwork sketches were approved. and management asked me if I could decorate the top of the backbox. I was shocked! Usually they took off features! I had spent a lot of dollars on the mini-playfield for the machine, rather than decoration. But, in that era, most Williams games had a backbox feature. And the continuing success of The Addams Family looked like that machine was going to run and run! So, I decided on a Dalek moving head, with an eye ball that would flash in time with the speech. I even devised an simple electronic circuit and software program that would give me the flash rates for any speech phrase that I could play back. But this was a last minute decision that had to be designed quickly. Several motors were tested, and broke. Meanwhile, four Styrofoam models of the head were made. All had a ‘snub nose’ which was made short because it had to fit under a protective plastic dome, there to avoid mischievous players or dedicated fans from pulling the Dalek eye out … and the width of the top of the backbox is very narrow! Then I made and sent a video tape of the prototypes for Terry Nation’s approval (he was the creator/owner of the Daleks). Finally, a reliable motor was found and a mock-up was created since the real parts would arrive just before our scheduled test date … and I still needed to develop the software to make it all work.</p><p>The Test </p><p>The issue of where to test a game has always be been a hot one. Here is the logic used to determine the location:</p><p>Criteria #1: Marketing and Sales want to sell as many as they can of the next game. But they do not want to impact the sales of the current game. Williams sells to distributors who stock the game, and the distributors sell the game to operators (operators being arcades and/or a ‘route’). So typically, they like to test a game as close to production as possible. But … The Addams Family was a bigger hit than expected, and no one knew when interest would die down.<i> Doctor Who </i>was the second game after <i>The Addams Family</i>, so, the ‘hurry up and wait’ syndrome happened. </p><p>Criteria #2: Test it in a low profile (so noone knows about it) but a high number of plays (for example in a popular arcade). </p><p>Now, how do you get a lot of people to play a game, but nobody knows about it? Marketing and Sales had the answer: They tested it at an average arcade called ‘Dennis’s Place’. They had about two walls of pinball machines, mostly videos, and a couple of sit down video games. At the time there were more high profile (for example Gala North Arcade) and low profile (for example a Bar) locations. All locations were well known test sites for manufacturers, and usually when we went to observe our own game on test we met employees from other manufacturers, and sometimes they even beat us to our own test locations! </p><p>The Artwork (Part Two) </p><p>It was after twelve prototypes had been built and tested that Williams decided that they wanted the Bally pinball cabinets to be more like Williams cabinets. This would allow Williams to order the same parts in a higher volume, thus qualifying for discounts on part prices. I knew that this was coming, but I just never knew when. </p><p>With regards to the <i>Doctor Who</i> pinball, it was ready to be produced, and was just waiting in line, mainly for <i>The Addams Family</i> machine to start to dip in popularity. Then the decision was made by Williams to change from the Bally style backbox to the Williams style backbox. The William backbox was a lot shorter, and Williams management suggested that we just cut off the bottom of the backbox art on the <i>Doctor Who</i> machine. But a mock up was created, and it looked terrible. It was then that the artist and I went back to the drawing board, and tried to come up with a replacement as fast as we could. I had suggested that we create a scene with the time expander, all seven Doctors, Davros and the Daleks. Then Linda took over the composition, and the final backglass was created. It then had to be rushed to the BBC for approval, and thankfully it was all approved without issue. The twelve <i>Doctor Who</i> pinball test games were made and tested (in public) with the Bally style backbox and then the twelve games were converted to the Williams style backbox. <i>Doctor Who</i> was the first Bally game to be produced with the Williams style backbox, and I do not know what happened to the original backglasses. </p><p>Cost cutting </p><p>Well, it had to happen to <i>Doctor Who</i>. While it was being produced, the money men came, and calculated the cost of producing the game, and decided it cost too much. After many hours of negotiation, the moving Dalek head on the backbox had to go. The head itself was cheap and could stay as part of the shipped game – it was just some plastic and a flasher, but it was integrated into the effects of the game, and so the head stayed! However the motion had to go, and this alteration was scheduled to happen after about 100 had been produced. I changed the software to try and detect the presence of the head, and then to activate the code to move it. There is even a game adjustment (adjustment 49) to manually enable the head software. Years later, some people have even added a motor to their <i>Doctor Who</i> game (take a look at http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Quark/1825/).</p><p>Premiering the Game</p><p>I had been to previous Visions conventions in the USA, and they feature <i>Doctor Who</i> and other TV shows. I proposed to Williams that we bring a couple of games to the convention in 1992 and have free handouts and a contest. We had plenty of free plastic handouts, and we decided the contest would award a backglass (or, in reality, back plastic) to the overall winner. But there was a condition, <i>Doctor Who </i>could only go to the convention if the game was actually in production. Remember the marketing rules from before: Williams did not show games before production, since it might have an adverse effect on the current game in production. Since production of <i>Doctor Who</i> was being delayed by the success of<i> The Addams Family</i> pinball, it was impossible to predict if the game could go to the convention or not. So, with these restrictions in mind, I contacted the convention people. They were happy that I wanted to show the pinball at their convention, but of course I could not guarantee if I could bring it at all! Hence, there could be no announcement or advertisement about the pinball in advance. However, I was lucky. About one month before the convention, <i>Doctor Who</i> finally went into production. It was too later to tell the convention organisers, but time enough for us to organize to have two games shipped to the convention. It turned out to be well received, and people loved the free handouts. Although I missed any of the actors visiting the game, I heard that they liked it.</p><p>Success Story</p><p>If there is one impossible obstacle that any pinball machine must face, it is when it comes after a mega-production hit. I am of course, talking about <i>The Addams Family </i>pinball. That game shipped about 20,000 units! It was a huge success that broke all records and raised all expectations for a popular pinball machine. The next one in line, <i>Black Rose</i> had a very short production life, and sold about 3,700 units. Although it was an average game (in my opinion) it was not as good as <i>The Addams Family</i>, and it did not meet the high expectations of the market. It took a while for the last <i>Black Rose</i> we produced to sell. Next in line was <i>Doctor Who</i> which started production in September of 1992. To my relief, that sold around 7,700 units. At around that time, an average production number was 4,000 to 5,000. </p><p>Summing Up</p><p>It was a lot of fun designing, programming, & even promoting this game. I am also glad that <i>Doctor Who</i> is now back on the air. I hope this inspires future game designers to continue their efforts despite the many obstacles & issues that can occur.</p><p><br /></p><p>Statistics and Information</p><p>The following information is from the Internet Pinball Database at: http://www.ipdb.org/machine.cgi?id=738</p><p>Doctor Who / IPD No. 738 / September, 1992 / 4 Players <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p>Average Fun Rating: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> 8.1/10 (34 ratings/29 comments) </p><p>Manufacturer: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Midway Manufacturing Company, a subsidiary of WMS Industries, Incorporated,</p><p>of Chicago, Illinois, USA (1988-1999) [Trade Name: Bally]</p><p>Model Number: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>20006</p><p>Common Abbreviations: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>DW</p><p>MPU: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Williams WPC (Fliptronics 2)</p><p>Type: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Solid State Electronic (SS) </p><p>Production: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>7,752 units (confirmed)</p><p>Theme: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Celebrities - Fictional - Licensed Theme</p><p>Notable Features: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Flippers (3; the two main flippers – ‘Lightning’ Flippers - are shorter than the standard size flippers), Ramps (2), Multiball</p><p>Toys: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Three Level Mini-Playfield</p><p>Design by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Barry Oursler, Bill Pfutzenreuter</p><p>Art by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Linda Deal (aka Doane)</p><p>Dots/Animation by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Scott Slomiany</p><p>Mechanics by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Zofia Bil</p><p>Music by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jon Hey</p><p>Sound by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Jon Hey</p><p>Software by: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Bill Pfutzenreuter</p><p>Marketing Slogans: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>‘It’s About Time’</p><p>’The Doctor Is In …’</p><p>Rule Sheets: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Doctor Who! Rulesheet Version 1.02 (Mar/31/1993), by Bowen Kerins </p><p>Richard Poser’s Tip Sheet (External Site)</p><p>Additional Info:<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>View at PinLinks.org (External site)</p><p>ROMs: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>355 KB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ZIP <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Game ROM L-2<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[Midway Mfg. Co.]</p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 MB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ZIP <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Game ROM P5 (Prototype) With L2 Sound<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[Midway Mfg. Co.]</p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>1 MB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ZIP <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>PinMame ROMs Set (L-2)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>260 KB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ZIP <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>PinMame Romsets (L-1)<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>995 KB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> ZIP <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Sound ROM L-1 [U14,U15,U18]<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[Midway Mfg. Co.]</p><p>Documentation: <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>8 MB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> PDF <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>English Manual<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>[Midway Mfg. Co., a subsidiary of WMS Industries, Inc.]</p><p> <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>207 KB<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span> TXT <span style="white-space: pre;"> </span>Parts List<span style="white-space: pre;"> </span></p><p><br /></p><p><span style="font-size: 11pt;"> </span></p>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-2310773226696811232020-04-14T12:54:00.000+01:002020-04-14T12:54:56.053+01:00NEW ADVENTURES IN SPACE AND TIME<br />
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">If you thought that <b>Doctor
Who</b> had died in 1989 when the TV series came off the air, then you
could not be more incorrect.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">Since then, an ever increasing number of novels
featuring the seventh Doctor and his companions Ace, and latterly Bernice, have
been published by Virgin Publishing. These novels, while bearing the name <b>Doctor
Who</b>, are in many respects far removed from the TV series that spawned them. 'Stories too broad and too deep for the small screen' ran the original
publicity, and this approach seems to have paid off, with every new novel
selling as many as 25,000 copies.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">To find out more about the range of books, and to meet
some of the authors involved, David J Howe met with
editor-in-chief Peter Darvill-Evans, assistant editor Rebecca Levene and writers
Paul Cornell, Gareth Roberts, Andy Lane and Jim Mortimore.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'<b>Doctor Who</b> <i>The New
Adventures</i> comes out of a long tradition of publishing books that
related to the <b>Doctor Who</b> television series,' explains Peter. 'Virgin Publishing gained permission to publish new novels at about
the same time as <b>Doctor Who</b> ended on television. As it became more and
more apparent that there wouldn't be any more <b>Doctor Who</b> on television,
the <i>New Adventures</i> became more and more important as the
standard bearers of <b>Doctor Who</b>. But it also meant that we were
increasingly able to regard the novels as taking <b>Doctor Who</b> into a
completely new medium, with completely new types of stories and perhaps a
different type of audience.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">To this end, Peter created a lengthy writer's guide
which, as well as giving basic information on how to write, what Virgin's house
style was, and the sort of stories they were after, also contained the concept
of the Time Wyrm - a running theme which was to tie together the first four
books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">Paul Cornell was the first previously unpublished author
to write one of the <i>New Adventures</i> and his book, <b>Revelation</b>,
concluded the first 'season' of books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'The story which became <b>Revelation</b> was
already there as a six part piece of fan fiction I had written for a fanzine
called <b>Queen Bat</b>,' reveals Paul. 'The story was
absolutely the same. I think that fan fiction has fed the <i>New
Adventures</i> to quite a large degree. Peter has very cleverly tapped in
to that aspect of fandom and has got quite a few of the people who were writing
in that fan fiction boom doing the same kind of things for the <i>New
Adventures</i> today, and that's a very good thing.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">Despite having written a large amount of fan fiction,
Paul found the process of actually writing a novel pretty gruelling. 'I'd never written anything of that length before, I had to teach
myself how to write a novel as I went along. It's a great challenge. I think
this is one of the things that a lot of first time <i>New
Adventures</i> writers have found.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'I'd never mounted any serious attempt to get
anything published professionally,' laughs Gareth Roberts, another
first-time novelist, 'but the <b>Doctor Who</b> connection is that I
used to fill up exercise books when I was a kid with <b>Doctor Who</b> stories
but they always stopped at around page three when I got bored. Strangely enough
- and this is a confession I have to make - some of the elements in <b>The
Highest Science</b> came from those exercise books.' <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">One of the unique things about the <i>New
Adventures</i> is the way that they are chosen. Peter revealed that almost
all the manuscripts that they receive are what other publishers would call the
slush pile. In other words, unsolicited submissions which have not come through
literary agents or through Virgin approaching an author. 'We actually
encourage our slush pile,' he exclaims, 'and we read it,
which most publishers don't do. Rebecca will go through all the submissions and
read every one. I then read the ones she recommends. The process of getting a
book published is long and hard but we do our best to work with the authors, to
encourage and suggest, and hopefully to end up with a good book.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'I've never known any publisher take the amount
of care and lavish the attention that Virgin do on their writers, especially
encouraging new writers,' comments Andy Lane. Andy had, like Paul
written a great deal of fan fiction, but had also branched out into factual
writing, his work appearing regularly in <i>Starburst </i>and many
other genre magazines.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'It's very important in publishing to
encourage new people to come along and then to develop them,' he
states. 'Publishers must encourage the next generation of writers. As
far as I can see Virgin are one of the few who are doing that and all praise to
them for it. If you look at the nearest equivalent to what Virgin are doing
here, to the <b>Star Trek</b> books, it's nowhere near the same. They take
established authors who write standard <b>Star Trek</b> plots. What Peter and
Rebecca are doing is taking new, untried authors with wonderful ideas, giving
them most of the latitude they want, guiding them a little bit along the way
and producing something magical at the end of it, and that's marvellous.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">Paul Cornell agrees with this view: 'If we'd
gone down the same path as the <b>Trek</b> people have then the <b>Doctor Who</b>
series would be of a lot less interest. One of the ways in which this
cultivates new authors is that we're expanding and going with the zeitgeist,
the current trend, the same way as the tv series always used to.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">This willingness to explore the boundaries of fiction
has resulted in a very diverse range of books. There are pure fantasy novels (<b>Witch
Mark</b>), horror novels (<b>Nightshade</b>, <b>White Darkness</b>), science
fiction (<b>Lucifer Rising</b>, <b>Shadowmind</b>), cyberpunk (<b>Love and War</b>,
<b>Transit</b>) and others which embrace any number of combinations of the
above genres.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'It's experimentation,' states Andy. 'We're given the freedom to experiment and just find new ways of
writing these books; I don't think anybody else is given that
freedom.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">Gareth agrees: 'I think where the <i>New
Adventures</i> score over the television series is that the television
series was quite limited. There was a wide, open-ranging format of times and
places but the same kind of plots were coming around a lot of the time. Whereas
in the novels some of the actual stylistic changes are incredible. The jump
between Marc Platt's <b>Time's Crucible</b> and Andrew Cartmel's <b>Warhead</b>
is amazing. You go from Platt's Dostoevsky-esque <b>Doctor Who</b> history
based book to a gritty futuristic cyberpunk thing, which you could never do in
the television series. So that freedom which was always talked about <b>Doctor
Who</b> is actually coming into its own.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">This freedom has only recently extended to featuring old
enemies of the Doctor, and Jim Mortimore's next <i>New
Adventure</i>, <b>Blood Heat</b>, features the return of the Silurians,
first seen on TV back in 1970 and again in 1984.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'The thing that appeals to me most of all
about the chance to write a novel in this sequence of <b>Doctor Who</b> books
is the fact that you don't actually have to write <b>Doctor Who</b>
stories,' explains Jim. 'Part of the brief is to write
science fiction stories. Science fiction has always, when it's been done well,
commented on what's going on socially, politically and emotionally in the
world. That's what appeals to me. By a quirky coincidence, all I've done is
managed to address the sort of things I'd like to address by way of stealing a
very obvious bit of <b>Doctor Who</b> continuity. I kind of smashed together
both worlds really and hopefully the result is quite interesting. Certainly it
wasn't done as an exercise in continuity. Some of the things that I like about
television drama are when you can see reflected what's going on in the world
and I tried to encompass some of that.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'You can write any story you want to and it
can be a <b>Doctor Who</b> story,' agrees Peter. 'We
briefly touched on the matter of genres, you can write horror, science fiction,
fantasy, crime thriller, historical romance ... all of these can still be <b>Doctor
Who</b> stories. But it's not just a matter of genres. You can also cover any
subject you want to from any angle you want to. <b>Doctor Who</b> itself is an
infinitely flexible subject matter. You can do anything with it.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">'The other thing is that the <i>New
Adventures</i> are character driven,' adds Rebecca. 'Regardless of the actual stories, it's the characters you put in
them and the fact that you can see everything from different viewpoints. Our
characters are very important in the novels. I also think it's interesting to
compare our books to the <b>Star Trek</b> novels. In those books there is a
large and fixed cast and you're stuck with them. You can't introduce many new
characters, you can't even kill the existing ones off. Whereas with the <i>New Adventures</i> you take a small TARDIS crew, you put them in
a strange setting and you have lots of other characters to play with. They are
really the reader's eyes onto a whole new situation and every novel has a whole
new cast who also have viewpoints to be explored.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "times new roman" , "serif"; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">As a final comment, Peter stresses that while the <i>New Adventures </i>form an ongoing series, they are very much
designed as a series of one-off novels. 'We do our best to organise
it so that the books tend to contrast with their predecessors and successors so
that although we are publishing in a series we don't get a bland, series feel.
For the regular reader there's a fluctuation of style and content that is
hopefully refreshing in that they don't know what to expect next, but equally
to the person who just comes along, sees a book on the shelf and decides to buy
it, we hope that they're not going to feel totally alienated.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-79114977042909944192020-04-14T12:44:00.002+01:002020-04-14T12:44:56.564+01:00OKTOBER COUNTRY<br />
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">It’s December 1997
and David Howe travels deep into the Surrey countryside in search of a film
crew currently working on the television adaptation of novelist Stephen
Gallagher’s 1988 novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oktober</i>.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The car I’m travelling in jolts and bumps over potholes as
we pass through what appears to be the middle of a Bavarian pine forest,
although we are in fact just outside the M25 in Surrey. The muddy track is
grooved and scarred by the passage of many vehicles, and the light drizzle
speckles the mud-splattered windshield as we move deeper into the woods. Small
white arrows are pinned to jauntily-angled wooden stakes along the way. Some
say ‘UNIT’, others ‘OKTOBER’. We are on the right track.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Suddenly the leafy canopy breaks and we emerge into an open
area in which an unfeasible number of cars, jeeps and land rovers are parked.
Across the makeshift car park is a line of caravans and generators, and, off in
the distance, bright lights can be seen shining across a lake.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Leaving the warmth and dryness of the car behind, I trudge
across some of the muddiest ground I have ever encountered (the suggestion to
‘wear boots’ was never more appreciated) and head towards the lake, where a
small wooden house is surrounded by technicians scurrying to and fro, setting
up lights and cameras and generally preparing for the evening’s filming.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Seemingly unperturbed by all this frenzied activity is my
host for the shoot, Stephen Gallagher himself. Not only did he write the novel
on which the television show is based, but he also wrote the screenplay and is
directing. As dusk starts to fall, I manage to grab Steve for some pictures
with a soon-to-be-crashed Mercedes before retiring to the warmth of a crew bus
to find out how <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> came about
and how it has all been going.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘It’s been good,’ smiled Steve. ‘It’s been one of the most
interesting experiences I’ve ever had. It’s also been extremely wearying and
exhausting and in one or two places quite harrowing as well.’ Steve is being
modest. He and his crew are currently on the sixth week of a seven week shoot.
The end result will be three, hour long episodes of a dramatic thriller with
science fiction undertones, starring Stephen Tompkinson of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ballykissangel</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drop The
Dead Donkey</b> fame.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘We have 42 days altogether,’ confirms Steve, ‘and I’ve got
three second unit days with a reduced unit of around six people that’ll take it
back to France to do some ski sequences that we just weren’t able to get while
we were over there.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The filming in France seems to have been fraught with
problems, not least because the French truck drivers decided to go on strike
the week they were due to travel out. Ultimately, however, this turned out to
be the least of their problems. ‘We had a week spent in Geneva and [Chamonie]
in France where we spent three days on top of the [edwee de midi] near Mont
Blank which is 4,000 metres up. A lot of the crew suffered badly from the lack
of oxygen and we had people dropping out left right and centre. The unit nurse
was loading them onto the cable car and sending them down. At least one guy was
hospitalised. I felt like Erik von Stronheim having led them up there. There
were only three of us that weren’t affected. Luckily the three were the
cameraman, Stephen Tompkinson and myself.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘It was a frightening time. There was the lack of oxygen …
the cable car journey was quite scary to some people … the claustrophobia once
we got up there … There was an element of nervousness which communicated itself
when the first couple of people fell ill. I mean everyone really hung in there
and tried to do the best they could. It was a really tough time. On the second
day we took up the mountain everybody we thought was OK from the first day. The
first day we lost something like eleven people which meant that my storyboards
went out the window and I had to rethink everything. “What can I get on film to
tell the story with those people I’ve got left?” On the second day we lost a
further eight people. Even the nurse was having to take oxygen by the end of
it.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> is the
story of one Jim Harper, who finds himself on the run from a large
multinational organisation as his body is host to one of their experiments, and
they want him back. Gallagher first started writing the novel in 1983 and it
wasn’t published until 1988. Like many authors, Gallagher’s work has variously
been optioned for film and television adaptation, but unlike others, Gallagher
seems to be hitting projects which actually happen.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The road to getting <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>
on screen was complex and involved, as Gallagher explains. ‘What happened was
that about two years ago I was approached by a script editor at the BBC to ask
if I had any ideas for series for BBC 2. They wanted an open-ended,
long-running series. A sort of contemporary thriller but with a weird edge to it.
Although the words “British <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">X-Files</b>”
were never used, you could tell that this was what they were really after. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Now we back-track a little. Around 1990, a producer called
Ian Smith had optioned <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>, two
years after it had been published, and Mike Newell was going to direct it. I
had numerous meetings with Mike, I very much enjoyed the contact, but at the
end of the day, the funding wasn’t there and we went our separate ways. Ian
went on to be production manager on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">City
Of Joy</b>, and I think the last thing he was production manager on was <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Fifth Element</b>, for Luc Bessant,
while Mike went on to do<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Four Weddings
And A Funeral</b>! As for me, I went back to my little office and carried on
writing novels. However, as a result of this, I had some half developed ideas
of what I would do with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober </b>for
the screen. Therefore when BBC-2 asked about ideas for new series, I wrote them
a little presentation about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>
and asked them what they thought. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘They got quite excited about it and within two weeks, it had
shot up through the entire strata of the BBC, and arrived on the desk of
Michael Jackson, the controller of BBC-2, who would give me an answer by
Thursday. Thursday came and went, and the next Thursday came and went. And a
full six months went by with no response or contact whatsoever and there’s
nothing more frustrating and annoying than that. Those lower down the ladder
were all quite gung-ho to get this in motion, the idea being that we would
adapt the book, and then at the end of the story those characters who were left
alive would move on into other stories involving corporate misdeeds or
whatever. Time passed, and all these people moved onto other projects and the
impetus that had been built up was lost. I have not to this day had any
response from controller level at the BBC on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>. Well … we’ve shot the thing now. I’ll probably get a call
next week asking to go in and talk about it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Given that no-one at the BBC had actually paid me anything,
and also that I’d got the thing up and running and still had a certain head of
steam about it, I decided to take it elsewhere. And the only other game in town
is really ITV.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘It just so happened that Nick Elliot, who was Head of
series and serials at the BBC, had just left the Corporation and had joined the
ITV network centre. Virtually the last thing he saw as he was leaving the BBC
was the last <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bugs </b>script that I did
for them, and virtually the first thing he saw when he arrived at ITV was a
letter from me talking about <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>.
He knew my work and so wrote to me asking if I’d come and talk about it, let
them see some material and they’d see what they thought. Initially, I thought
that was all going to go nowhere as it all seemed a little luke warm, however,
Elliot’s assistant, a lady called Jenny Reece, really championed the project.
She read it and bent Nick’s ear about it and eventually, they suggested I try
and get a producer involved in order to pay for a script to be developed. I
didn’t tell them this, but I would happily have done a script for nothing in
order to advance the project further. So I went to Brian Eastman with whom I’d
been working on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Bugs</b>. I explained to
him that I had this thing up and running with ITV but I couldn’t do it on my
own, so was he interested in coming on board. He read the material – he’d never
read the book as it turned out – and he optioned it on the basis of the outline
and knowing what I wanted to do.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘It was around that time that I basically attached myself to
the project more directly. At the BBC, there’d never been any inkling that I’d
be directing it, but when I took it across to ITV, I did so on the basis that I
would both write and direct it, and waited for someone to challenge that view,
but no-one ever did.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘So I had a script and a producer, but we still weren’t home
and dry because ITV started this little dance, saying that they really liked
it, but they had seven projects they liked but only three slots in which to
place them. It was Brian who suggested coming up with some ideas for casting,
as if we could attach some names to it, then we might be able to swing the
balance with ITV in our favour. I’d wanted Stephen Tompkinson for the part of
Joe Lucas in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Rain </b>when that was in
development for the BBC but whenever I’d suggested him, everyone looked at <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drop The Dead Donkey</b> and thought “Light
Entertainment”: how can you cast him in a thriller? It was only when he did <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brassed Off</b> and showed that there was a
dark side to him as well, that people started to take my suggestion seriously.
Steve was the very first actor I suggested for the part of Jim Harper in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>, he’s the only one I put
forward. He was the first and only actor we showed it to: I had lunch with him
and his agent and he came along thinking he was just up for the part and had to
pitch for it. We were there just hoping he’d like it. We got on like a house on
fire and he really liked the material and we just took it forward from there.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Within two weeks of attaching Stephen’s name to the project
we received the go-ahead from ITV. They claim that this was coincidence, and
that Stephen being attached to the project had nothing to do with their
decision, but I have my doubts.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Over this extended period of development, the basic
requirement for the production kept changing, and each time the scripts needed
adjusting to take these things into account. ‘One of the difficulties with <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober </b>was that the brief I kept
getting back from the potential producers kept changing,’ explained Gallagher.
‘First it was going to be four, one hour episodes, and then they wanted it to
be three hours long in two 90 minute parts. Then it finally settled down as
three one hour parts and the structure had to change quite a bit to accommodate
all those alterations.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The two 90 minute ones were quite exciting because the
climaxes from the original story fell in the most natural places. When we went
to three one hour episodes they wanted the climax of the first part to fall in
the same place as that between the 90 minute episodes, which meant that I had
to do a bit of radical restructuring and re-plotting a bit later on. I don’t
think I’ve been in any way unfaithful to the original book, although I’ve
changed a lot of incident and dialogue, but, let’s face it, it’s several years
on from when I did the original book. I don’t feel I need to slavishly do the
same thing again. I confident that I’ve taken all the same impulses and have
told the story with pictures instead of words.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Steve Gallagher is primarily a writer, used to telling his
stories with words, and creating pictures in his readers’ minds. How has he
found the switch from writer to director, especially as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> has been his first experience of directing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘What I’ve found the hardest is going right in at the deep
end. I’m surrounded by people with lots of technical knowledge, but I don’t
have the terminology with which to put my ideas over. I’ve been learning new
terms, words and approaches from the very start. On Day One I found out what a
‘dirty single’ was. This is the term for an over the shoulder shot where you
have a close up of somebody, but someone else’s’ shoulder is just fringing the
shot. In the old days, such an image was unthinkable, you just couldn’t do it,
but modern camera techniques allow you that flexibility and it’s also
considered acceptable. Every day I’m discovering new ideas and techniques, and
different ways that I can tell my story on screen. It’s very exiting.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Despite my initial problems with communication, every day I
start out with a long list of shots that I want to get and I strike them off
the list as I do them. I look at the rushes at the end of each day and, one way
or another, what I intended to get has been what I actually did get. So somehow
the crew are managing to pick my brains as I stumble inarticulately through
what I want to achieve and they’re giving me pretty much what I want.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘In some cases, I’m seeing something in the rushes that’s
better than I’d hoped or expected, and in other cases there are things that
just didn’t work out. We’re running over anyway, and so I suspect that some
scenes will be cut and others will be treated in a different editorial manner.
I’ve even been able to go back and re-shoot some material even though we are on
an enormously tight schedule. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I was told by the first assistant director after the first
week of shooting that whatever I do after this, I’ll never do anything as hard
as this. I suppose it really has been a case of jumping in at the deep end and
has been something of a baptism of fire. Stephen Tompkinson has been wonderful
for me in that respect because not only is he an extremely good actor, he’s
also technically competent and very generous. When you get those three things
together in one actor, you’re smiling. Stephen is right at the centre of the
production and his presence on screen really holds the whole thing together.
The strength that he brings to the part is of great benefit to me because I
don’t have to worry about the central performance, which is very much critical
to the overall success of the production.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With much of the filming complete, how has Gallagher found
directing the necessary action sequences, including what is to happen at the
cabin today.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘We started as we meant to go on,’ he laughs. ‘In the first
week down at Woolwich we had a 100 foot stunt dive off the top of a building.
We then moved down to Broadstairs for the second week and drowned a Volkswagen
in the sea, right up to its doors. All our actors, cameramen and even the
camera were kitted out in wetsuits and everyone was in the freezing sea up to
their armpits. I was pleased with that material as we managed to achieve very
good production values and it’s all there on the screen. It all went a bit
quiet after that until we were 4000 metres up and everyone was being
stretchered down off the mountain suffering from oxygen deprivation. We’ve had
a couple of extremely good looking fight scenes that were superbly
choreographed and executed. One of them was in a dissection room that we built
out in Wembley, and the other was a big set-piece fight which comes just before
the finale of episode three, and that was shot in the dog-pen set which we
built down in Camden, so those were quite big sequences.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Outside in the growing dusk, the drizzle has eased off
leaving it simply cold and muddy. A tea wagon steams to itself in the
background and people make frequent trips to obtain polystyrene beakers of hot
liquid, partly to drink, but mostly to warm the hands.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Inside the cabin, preparations are nearing completion for
one of the main sequences, in which a car is driven into the cabin, smashing
through the wall. Stephen Tompkinson and Maria Lennon playing Jim Harper and
his friend Linda disable the driver and then drive off in the car, just before
the cabin catches fire.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Today is probably the biggest and most complex sequence of
the entire shoot,’ explains Stephen. ‘It depends on a combination of a number
of skills. We’ve got three cameras rolling on it, we’ve got the stunt driver,
we’ve got the riggers who have rigged the house to break away, there are
pyrotechnics as well. This is just a gravel area by a lake and the cabin
doesn’t exist.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I look across to where it is standing: large as life. A
wooden cabin containing two comfortably furnished rooms and a blazing log fire
in the hearth. Certainly it is somewhere warmer than the December night that is
drawing in outside. ‘Three days ago we started shooting here, and three days
before that, the house wasn’t there,’ insists Stephen. ‘The production designer
bought a job lot of old floorboards and built the place from scratch. He
apparently based it on a houseboat that he stayed in on a lake in India.
Everyone who walked into it on the first day said that it was lovely and that
they could live there. Of course you wouldn’t want to live there because it
would be cold and damp and filthy, but it really caught people’s hearts at that
moment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Because <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>
is all about archetypes and shared nightmares and the things that we all have
in common in our subconscious minds, what I’m trying to do is hit as many of
those unconscious pedals that are common to us all as possible. The comfort and
safety of the cabin was one of these pedals and obviously I hit it with the
production designer and everyone else on the unit as well because they all
responded in exactly the same way to it.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At that moment, Stephen is summoned away to supervise the
sequence of filming that will culminate with the total destruction of the
cabin. I watch as he puts Tompkinson and Lennon through their paces. The car
revs up, and drives straight into the side wall of the cabin. Glass appears to
break, wood smashes, and everyone rushes to ensure that there are no problems.
There are not.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There follow more scenes inside the cabin as our heroes
overpower the driver, jump in the car and reverse out of the cabin. As darkness
really takes grip, preparations are made to ignite the place. The pyrotechnics
are set, and the flames start. Stephen is not happy, though. It doesn’t look
right, it isn’t his shot. Suddenly, the cabin itself catches – this was always
a possibility – and the fire starts to burn out of control. The cameras keep
rolling, Steve smiles broadly. He now has his shot, and the burning cabin is
merrily warming the crew clustered around.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Another impressive sequence is in the can for <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>, what looks like an impressive
debut for Gallagher, and a thrilling television production for the spring of
1998 on ITV.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
OKTOBER – THE PLOT</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-pagination: no-line-numbers; text-align: justify;">
Jim
Harper doesn’t know it but he’s a walking experiment. One minute he was a
lovelorn teacher at a school in Switzerland, the next he’s escaping from the
secret Alpine laboratory of a multi-national pharmaceutical company, with a
security division larger than most governments’. They hunt him ruthlessly, for
his body contains their secret enzyme which could make illegal millions for the
company – and can turn him into a weapon of enormous potential. Fleeing to
England, and with no-one to trust but his beautiful companion Linda, Jim has to
discover what the Oktober project is and how it can be stopped. If he fails,
the prospects for the world are truly terrifying.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PETER DIAMOND – STUNT CO-ORDINATOR</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Peter Diamond has been working as a stuntman and stunt
co-ordinator in film and television for many, many years. He is one of the most
experienced and accomplished at his art, and was brought onto <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> by the first assistant, Roger
Symons. ‘I’ve worked with Roger on several other things,’ explained Diamond,
‘and he got in touch with me and asked if I wanted to be the stunt gaffer on
this. Luckily, another show that is quite busy for me is <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Hart Beat</b>, and this was going through a quiet patch, which allowed
me to fit <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> in.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I met with Stephen Gallagher, who explained exactly what he
wanted and then asked me how we could achieve it – which is what they hired me
for. What I try and do is interpret Stephen’s ideas onto film, and it seems to
be working very well.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The stunt today involves driving a car through the wall of a
cabin. How does Peter start to plan such an effect. ‘First of all you have to
try and analyse the danger and then eradicate it. That’s the important thing
about stunt work: we’re all in the make-believe business and you have to try
and not get hurt, because if you get hurt, then the business suffers.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The most difficult aspect was that they had already filmed
some scenes with the car <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">after</i> the
crash was supposed to have happened, and so I had to try and maintain
continuity with that. We had to make sure that the car didn’t get damaged and
thus mess up your continuity. So the biggest problem I had was not to break the
windscreen – which is usually the first thing to go on a car smash – or the
headlights. We very carefully placed everything in the cabin in a good position
so it would look effective on camera but in fact, would not damage the
important parts of the car.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘You can’t control exactly where everything is going to
smash, but from experience – which I hope I have enough of – you can visualise
where everything is most likely to go. We had a cable tied to the back of the
car to slow it down once the crash happened and the reason for this was that
inside the cabin there was a table made of real wood. If that had caught under
the tyres, it could have been thrown off line and gone up into the radiator,
the engine, anything.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘We needed to slow the car down to ensure that it was safe.
Supposing something had come through the windscreen or the side window and had
knocked the driver unconscious. The car would still be running and it could
have ploughed on through the cameras and everything. As a stunt co-ordinator
you have to try and anticipate anything and everything. People don’t realise
the work that goes into it because everything looks simple and effective on
screen, but you have to think of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">everything</i>.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The car would have reached only around 20 or 25 miles an
hour when it hit the cabin, but it still did quite a lot of damage. Of course
they’ll enhance the crash with sound, smashing glass and tyre squealing and so
on so it’ll look far more dramatic on screen.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
JOHN RAFIQUE – SPECIAL EFFECTS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In charge of the Special Effects team on <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> is John Rafique, from Elements
Specialist Design. The company has only been in existence for a few months,
after John and some others set it up after working at other effects houses and
wanting to strike out on their own. Shows they’ve been involved with include a
children’s television series called <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chucklevision</b>
– ‘a sort of knockabout show, very cheap and cheerful, with jokey props and
slapstick’ – and they also worked on a Christmas television commercial for
Boots, the Chemist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
For <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>, the
effects required ranged from relatively simple bullet hits up to a complex prop
used to hold a dog. ‘In the storyline these dogs are penned up in cages,’
explained John, ‘and there is one cage where the dog has been fitted with
medical drips and other apparatus. They wanted a special cage to keep this dog
in where he would be happy and we arranged all the drip-lines so they ran to a
special collar. The creation of an effect like this involves a lot of
co-ordination between us and the dog handler to make sure that everything was
right. For example, the production designer had specified that the floor of the
cage should be made from perforated steel, and we had to check that what we
wanted to use would be okay for the dog to walk on. We had to make sure of the
collar size for the dog, and just about everything else to make sure that there
would be no problems come the filming. We then had to prepare the cage a week
early so that the dog handler could take it away to their house where the dog is
most comfortable and get it used to going in the cage so that by the time we
were on set all was well.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘All these considerations had to be factored into our
timescales and this was actually a bit of a problem as the effects requirements
expanded, and there was considerably more than we originally planned for. As a
result we lost six days from the timescale in producing the cage. We managed it
but only because the dog fell ill and couldn’t look at the cage when it was
originally planned. That gave us an extra couple of days to get it all finished
off.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The most challenging effect has probably been the cabin and
the car. The designer came to us and said that they wanted to see the car going
through the wall of the cabin and the fire coming afterwards. So between us,
the designer Julian Fullalove, Stephen Gallagher and Peter Diamond we had to
figure out a way of doing this. We generally come up with the ideas and the
others then tell us if there are any snags, like blocking camera angles,
particular safety considerations and so on.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The problem was to stop the car from moving once it had
crashed into the cabin and what we used was quite a simple method: weights on
the back of the car. We would normally use a large piston but were unable to do
so on this shoot because of the area we’re filming in. The piston has a small
air hole and it’s the air pressure that lets the piston out at a steady rate,
thus slowing the car down and preventing it from running out of control. That
method is used because it’s infinitely variable: you can change the size of the
air escape hole depending on the weight of the car involved and whatever speed
it will be doing. In this environment, however, it’s too dirty to use a piston
and so we used plastic bins with sandbags in instead. The car’s exhaust had to
be strengthened to withstand the pull of the car, but that’s the only
modification that was made.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<o:p> </o:p> </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEPHEN TOMPKINSON – ACTOR</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Actor Stephen Tompkinson is on a bit of a roll at the
moment. Perhaps best known for his role as Damian, the investigative reporter
in Andy Hamilton and Guy Jenkin’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Drop
the Dead Donkey</b> and as the priest Peter Clifford in Kieran Prenderville’s <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ballykissangel</b>, Tompkinson was chosen
for the part of Jim Harper in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b>
by director Stephen Gallagher based on a firm belief that he was right for the
part.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘This has been brilliant,’ enthuses the actor whilst
relaxing after another gruelling day in front of the camera. ‘It’s such a
departure from anything I’ve done before. Steve Gallagher saw this dark element
in me which was fair enough. This is non-stop action this thriller. It’s got
chase sequences in it that would put James Bond to shame!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘This has been a hard shoot. As far as preparation went,
I’ve lost a stone and have been keeping myself quite fit. The character is
really all there on the page, the writing’s that good. I couldn’t wait to turn
the pages of the script when I first saw it. I couldn’t believe I was being
offered it, actually. It was great. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The appeal of the character came out of the fact that the
story is very much like <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Thirty-Nine
Steps</b> or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">North by Northwest</b> in
that everything happens to an ordinary fellow. How do you cope with it, when
you’re dealing with a multinational company who are well capable in their way
of just torching you rather than let you tell tales? What do you do? Who do you
trust? Friends turn out to be enemies. There’s nowhere to hide.’</div>
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As the plot proceeds it becomes apparent that Harper has
been given a very special sort of drug, and that certain people will stop at
nothing to ensure that he does not live to tell the world about the experiments
that have been carried out on him.</div>
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‘The idea behind the drug,’ explains Tompkinson, ‘is that
were you to think of your loveliest and happiest thoughts and you did this in
front of an audience, then they would all experience the same thing. But
likewise, if you wanted to release all your darkest demons then they would
experience that as well. That’s what “the company” hadn’t thought out. My
character can actually put his pain onto anyone and slay them with pure emotion
and feeling. It’s a fantastic idea, and there’s nothing else like this being
made at the moment in this country. I’m very proud of ITV for actually getting
the script to put on. It’s not like the inside of a hospital ward or a police
station, or even the rural loveliness of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Heartbeat
</b>or <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ballykissangel</b>. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> is completely raw and yet its
only three episodes long. I would love it if they showed it on three
consecutive nights as the plot rolls along so fast that you really get hooked
by it. Steve has a beautiful economy of words and I think that the show could
stay in the viewing public’s memory as, for example, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Edge Of Darkness</b>, or something like that. It really has that
enduring quality. It’s a really immediate story and you care about this person
because he is an innocent, and yet suddenly becomes worth 50 billion dollars on
legs and it’s easier to kill him than to risk the secrets he carries being made
public knowledge.’</div>
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Despite appearing in numerous shows since leaving drama
school in 1987, including <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chancer</b>, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Minder</b>, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Manageress</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brassed
Off</b>, (in fact Tompkinson is proud that, since 1987, he has only been
unemployed for three and a half weeks, when he went to Australia to watch the
cricket) <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Oktober</b> is the first time
that he has really achieved ‘star billing’. </div>
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‘The other shows are real ensemble pieces, but this is the
first time I’ve carried the story,’ he explains. ‘It’s not a pressure, it’s
great. It’s what any actor always wants. You train for three years doing all
sorts of things. I’ve worked in all manner of supporting roles since 1987 and
now suddenly I’m starring. It’s as though I’ve earned my stripes.</div>
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‘What’s great is the variety. Variety is what I’ve craved.
Actors are an odd breed. You’re never happy when you’re unemployed, but as soon
as work comes along you worry about getting typecast. For example, when playing
Damian I felt that maybe I was going to be comedic for the rest of my life, but
then I won the comedy award for best actor, and then <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ballykissangel </b>happened which was poles apart from Damian, and then
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Brassed Off</b>, and now this. The
common link is really the strength of the scripts. I’ve been lucky enough to be
involved in great scripts.’</div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-81771884002246006332020-04-14T12:41:00.002+01:002020-04-14T12:41:28.984+01:00LEGEND - THE GRAPHIC NOVEL<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Just published is the graphic novel of
David Gemmell's groundbreaking fantasy <b>Legend</b>.
David J Howe spoke to the perpetrators.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The task of turning David Gemmell's classic book into a
graphic novel was the job of the original author along with the combined
talents of Stan Nicholls, who provided the words, and Chris Baker - otherwise
known as Fangorn - who provided the pictures. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Stan Nicholls is perhaps better known as a journalist,
interviewer and reviewer. His book review column can be found in<i> The
Dark Side</i> magazine, and recent projects include the novelisation of
the <b>Tom and Jerry</b> film, and the autobiography of William Roache who
plays Ken Barlow in <b>Coronation Street</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'My involvement with <b>Legend: A Graphic Novel</b> came
about because David Gemmell had singlehandedly revitalised my interest in
fantasy fiction,' explains Stan. 'I had gone completely off it because I
thought it was a very moribund genre. The opportunity to interview Dave came up
and I thought I'd better read his books. I was enormously impressed with <b>Legend</b>
for its pace, its vitality and particularly for its characterization as good
characterization is very rare in fantasy. Dave's books are full of human stuff,
stuff you can relate to, almost domestic detail mixed in with all the battle
and epic goings on. I then sat down to do an hour-long interview and were still
there five hours later. I subsequently read the rest of his books and found
them all to be immensely enjoyable. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Then about two, maybe three years ago, we were talking
about graphic novels. In fact we were talking about films. I'd always
maintained that <b>Legend</b>, given a huge budget, would make a great movie
and that kind of mutated into talking about how we could visualize it, and we
decided to do a graphic novel. That's how it began. I wasn't given the job
because I was Dave's mate, I had to audition like anybody else and he was good
enough to trust me with it. <b>Legend</b> was Dave's first book, it was written
under very peculiar, very dramatic circumstances - he thought he was dying of
cancer at the time - and then he had a lot of trouble getting it published.
Despite this it remains Dave's best selling book, and of course the one for
which he feels the most affection. So to hand it to me and say do what you want
with it was an act of great faith. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'At no point has Dave ever said "I don't like what
you're doing." He's made suggestions but he's never made demands. I've
found him very good to work with and very trusting. I think his attitude is, if
you own a dog you don't bark yourself.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Along with the artist, Chris Baker, David Gemmell and
Stan Nicholls have formed a company called Waylander Enterprises in order to
package more of Gemmell's books as Graphic Novels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'One of Dave's books is called <b>Waylander</b>,'
explains Stan, 'and what we are doing is creating the books to then be sold on
to publishers. <b>Legend</b> is Waylander Enterprises' first title, <b>Wolf in
Shadow</b> is the second and all being well we want to do not only more of
Dave's books but also books by other people: fantasy, science fiction, and
perhaps some horror.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'We want to do quality graphic novels. That's what we're
hoping for and that's why <b>Legend</b> took a long time to develop. The
intention to produce something of quality grew out of the realisation of what
an adaptation is. It isn't taking the book, nailing it to a piece of wood and
passing it to the artist to paint. What I realised very quickly were, first of
all, the nearest medium you can compare a graphic novel to is movies. The
script is very similar, the way you look at it is very visual, you use some of
the same terminology: jump-cut, fade-to-black and so on. The other slightly
deeper realization is that you don't just take a book and turn it into a comic.
It's essentially a process of deconstruction and reconstruction, in other
words, you have to absorb yourself in the original and read it many, many
times, then you attempt to capture the essence and then you retell the story. I
think that's how you have to adapt.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'What I produce first of all is a script, just the
words, but it's structured like film shooting script. It might say: "Page
One, Panel One. Three men ride into a town with guns blazing, people running
out of the way..." Sometimes this can be a very long and detailed description,
just for the first panel.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I can't draw a straight line, but I made myself up a
dummy book corresponding to the finished product and in that dummy I worked out
the flow and where the spreads were. It's very important to remember that you
don't look at single pages in isolation, you look at two-page spreads, left and
right, so every page of the script will have a reminder of this for the artist
at the top. You also try to end a right hand page with a revelation, a
close-up, something to get people to turn over and keep reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'We gained confidence with the format as we went
through. If you look at <b>Legend: A Graphic Novel</b> closely, you'll see that
the experimentation with the panel sizes and shapes becomes more radical as the
book progresses. We also put a lot of thought into what happens to the
colouring as the story unfolds. You'll find that it is more vivid towards the
end than at the beginning and that in scenes of despair the colour hues are, as
it were, despairing. The book is a synthesis of Chris's vision and my vision
and ultimately Dave's vision, because he was the ultimate referee.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I hope it works. It took us eighteen months to do the
actual work, probably two years from the point of conception, but I hope it has
all been worth it.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">DAVID GEMMELL</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I was raised on Marvel and DC Comics and I've always
wanted to see a graphic novel of <b>Legend</b> done well. I didn't have the
time to break the script down which is where Stan came in. He's a tremendous
professional, you can always rely on Stan to do what he says he'll do and he's
not a prima donna. You need people you can rely on to give the thing some
heart. So having decided on Stan to do the breakdowns, we then had to find a
really good artist. Initially, we were looking at some of the biggest guys in
the field but they are mostly booked up years ahead, men like John Bolton and
Simon Bisley. We then decided to find a new talent and we saw quite a few
artists' work until we were introduced to Chris Baker. He came down to see us
and produced some pages of art which just knocked us out so we signed Chris
there and then.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'The process of producing a graphic novel is very
involved. Somebody once said the Devil was the first lawyer and if that's true,
it was a publisher who hired him. But when you look at what Random House have
put into this project, knowing nothing about graphic novels, I've only got the
highest praise for them. Random agreed that it should be printed on the finest
quality paper, at one of the best places in Europe and that it would be
stitched, not glued. I'm fed up with buying graphic novels that I read twice
and a page falls out. The care that the publishers took is evidenced by the
fact that they flew Chris out to Milan where it was printed to judge the colour
balance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'<b>Legend</b> is a nice, tight story centering around a
fortress under siege and a small group of heroes. There is a lot about valour,
bravery, courage and nobility that made it ideal for graphic novel. It also has
a central hero, an old man called Druss. Druss the Axeman is absolutely made to
be painted. Chris Baker put his heart into this, it's his first graphic novel
and the reaction to it has been fabulous.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'My actual involvement was as an arbiter. Chris is a
great artist and he's very intense about his work. Stan knew what he felt the
script should say and how the story should flow in visual terms. I basically
resolved any disputes between them. The biggest problem facing Stan was the
size of the novel. There's something like ninety characters in <b>Legend</b>,
and Stan decided that we just couldn't have all the sub plots. In that respect,
Chris and Stan were both against me because I'd suggest including aspects that
had been dropped and they would both say "No". <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'As to the future, when we were halfway through this
project, Random commissioned a second graphic novel from the three of us. Chris
and Stan are currently working on <b>Wolf in Shadow</b> which is another book
of mine. Chris has produced about twenty two pages so far and his work is just
getting better and better.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Chris is an astounding artist. We sent the artwork for <b>Legend</b>
round to John Bolton and asked him for an honest opinion. "Chris is a real
find, a real talent, hang on to him," he told me. "He's done some
spectacular work here; I can see some of his influences but the most important
thing is that what's coming through is pure Baker, he's got his own individual
voice." Coming from John Bolton, that is a great compliment.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">FANGORN - CHRIS BAKER<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I got involved through a friend. Dave and Stan were
looking for an artist and a friend just mentioned my name to Dave. I had a chat
with Dave, sent a couple of samples of artwork - I didn't have any comic work -
and it went on from there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'The funny thing is, I've only ever had two pages of
comic work published before, and that was in the second issue of
<I>Starburst<D>. After Dave asked me to produce something from <b>Legend</b>
to show the publishers, I took a scene from the book and painted some pages,
they liked them and I got the job.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I've been painting professionally since I was at school
I suppose, because I was selling stuff even then. I did a little freelancing at
college, then I worked for an advertising agency for twelve years doing
illustration, design and layout. In the meantime I was still freelancing. I've
done a lot of games work for German companies and stuff for Waddingtons, as
well as some book jackets. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'The easiest way for me to think of <b>Legend</b> was in
terms of a film and to try and tell the story in relatively simple terms.
Because <b>Legend</b> is rooted in a kind of reality, you can't be overly fancy
with your page layouts. First and foremost you're telling a story about people
and the layout and design must reflect that. I would like to be given the
opportunity to come up with an original story to tell in comic terms but with <b>Legend</b>
you are restricted in how you design a page by the story.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I did read Dave's book, but Stan's script was the basis
for the Graphic Novel. It was a watered down version of the book unfortunately,
because there are a lot of scenes that I wished I could have painted. When
working on something like this you quickly realise how short 96 pages is and we
had problems trying to tell the story visually within that. Traditional comics
are sequential art, and with <b>Legend</b> we had to lose some of that aspect.
The action runs across the page from the first panel to the last panel and it
couldn't be overly sequential because you would be trying to fit too much
information into a single panel. I think that was about the only real problem I
had with it: cramming the story into 96 pages.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'It must have taken me about nine months to complete the
paintings. Some of them just flowed off my pen: things like people sitting at a
table - they're always much easier to paint than action scenes. Because with
action you really have to start thinking about the figures and the movement.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Anything really physical I pose for myself, I tend to
either use a mirror - I've got one in front of my drawing board - or
photographs. There's nothing taken direct from these sources however, things
just don't work out that way, I don't look anything like those people! My wife
posed for a couple of things, but she doesn't look anything like the finished
pictures. Part of the problem I had with <b>Legend</b> was that I didn't
originally want to portray it that realistically. I wanted to go for a much
more "from the hip" look, where you just drew from the heart but the
story didn't come across that way, it wasn't abstract in any way whatsoever. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'One of my heroes is an artist called Alex Nino, and he
was very much more expressionistic. You don't really hear a lot about him these
days but he was very popular in the early eighties. He was a real master of
comic art, of laying out pages, coming up with incredible page designs and this
kind of thing, pulling the medium to its limits. That's the way I would really
like to do comics.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Currently I'm working on <b>Wolf in Shadow</b> which is
quite different. Instead of swords and axes there's guns and rifles. There's no
dramatic swinging of weapons above the head; you find yourself asking how many
ways are there of showing someone being shot without getting boring? Or how
many ways can you show someone actually shooting a gun? Thankfully it hasn't
been a problem.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-69898890217552792862020-04-14T12:37:00.002+01:002020-04-14T12:37:31.698+01:00F PAUL WILSON<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Since 1981, F Paul Wilson has chilled
and terrified readers through a growing series of top-rate horror novels. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">It started in 1981, when his novel <b>The
Keep</b> was published. But the roots of Paul's addiction to writing go
even further back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It started for me in Second Grade. I remember back
when I was six or seven, there was an edition of <i>Life </i>magazine with dinosaurs on the cover. I was flipping through it and I came to a
picture of tyrannosaurus rex standing there, fixing me with that beady little
eye. Something just clicked inside me and I wanted to learn more about these
things; these monsters. Dinosaurs and rocket ships, those were the two things
that defined my youth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I have always tended to think of myself more as a
story teller than a writer, in the sense that being able to capture the
audience is important to me, and not just writing what I'm feeling."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">As well as being a writer, Paul is a practising doctor.
I wondered if he had ever considered taking up writing full-time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Writing is still my hobby, in a sense, although
I'm earning more money from that than from being a physician. I'm a family
practitioner so I'm at the bottom end of the doctor income level. For me,
writing isn't 'working', but if I quit medicine it would become my job and I
don't think I'd like that. I don't want to give up medicine completely as I
think writing makes me a better doctor and doctoring makes me a better writer.
Writing is a compulsion. I want to get up there and do it - I'm anxious to get
to it. I can have been slaving away in the medical office all day but then
really look forward to getting home so I can produce some more words in the
evening."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Although the bulk of Paul's work is in the horror field,
he initially started writing Science Fiction with <b>Healer</b> (1976) and <b>Wheels
Within Wheels</b> (1978). It was with <b>The Keep</b> (1981), however, that
Paul found his first major commercial success.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"That was my biggest seller. It sold over a million
copies in America and it's been sold to almost every country you can think of.
I wanted it to be horror; it's got a vampire red herring, it's set in the
Transylvania Alps, features immortal beings (that's the Lovecraft influence
that comes in with the cosmic horror). It came about because I read Chelsea
Quinn Yarboro's <b>Hotel Transylvania</b> which has a sympathetic, good vampire
and I said to myself that that's impossible, you can't have a good vampire.
They are parasites by nature. So I started thinking about a vampire that seemed
good but really wasn't, that was leading you on. Was he even a vampire? What if
he wasn't afraid of the crucifix but something else that just looked like a
cross? All of a sudden it hit me: the hilt of a sword!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"The novel just built from there. There were a lot
of things I could play with. I liked the different levels of evil: human evil,
the Nazis, all that kind of stuff."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The Keep</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;"> was followed in 1984 by another horror book, this time
taking a different approach, and introducing one of Paul's most endearing and
memorable characters. Repairman Jack is, as the name suggests, a man who
'repairs' things, in the same way as Edward Woodwood's character 'equalised'
things in the TV series of the same name. Jack is a brilliant character who
shines from the pages as if he is real. <b>The Tomb</b> did not, however, find
immediate favour with the publishers.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"My American publisher hated <b>The Tomb</b> and
wouldn't publish it, but it was published in the UK by New English Library.
It's a lot of people's favourite. I get letters all the time asking when I am
going to write more about Repairman Jack. When he's ready, is the reply. I've
got some short stories about him but he's not ready for another novel just
yet."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Following <b>The Tomb</b> came <b>The Touch</b> which
contained a dramatic change of pace from the previous two books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"<b>The Touch</b> was developed out of my own frustrations
in medicine. There are always things you come up against ... your whole job is
supposed to be counteracting disease and so many times you can't. So much of it
is tragic; the girl who comes in with bruises all over her back and she wants
them cleared up in time for her prom. You do a blood count and realise that
she's not actually going to live to see her prom. You're helpless. A sixteen
year old girl is going to die from leukaemia and there is nothing you can do!
That's where a lot of this kind of fiction comes from."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Although these three books are distinct from each other,
Paul has cleverly pulled all the concepts and characters together, along with
two novels which expand on the ideas laid out in <b>The Keep</b> - <b>Reborn</b>
and <b>Reprisal</b> - into his most recent paperback horror novel, <b>Nightworld</b>.
Paul explained that this was not intentional from the start, but that it
developed towards the end of the series.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"<b>Reborn</b> was actually started between <b>The
Keep</b> and <b>The Tomb</b>. It was quite a different book at that time but it
still contained the ideas of cloning and the Antichrist story. I couldn't get
it to work at that time and the Repairman Jack character was nibbling away at
me and so I had to write <b>The Tomb</b> next. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"<b>Reborn</b>, <b>Reprisal</b> and <b>Nightworld</b>
were all planned out at once, as one story, and I resurrected <b>Reborn</b> at
that time. What happened was that I didn't really want to do an Antichrist
story. I wanted some other evil entity for my heroine to give birth to. So I
thought, what about Rasalom in <b>The Keep</b>? Why don't I use him? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Then I wanted a small town near New York in which
to set the book, because I could then have scenes in New York City. In <b>The
Touch</b>, there's the close-to-New York town of Munro. Maybe, I thought, I can
pull in the third book as well - and I could. There was this nice, complete
little circle. So then in order to finish <b>Reborn</b> and tie it into <b>Nightworld</b>
I needed a bridging book which is where <b>Reprisal</b> came from. So that's
the way it happened and I was really amazed at the way it worked."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Nightworld</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">, of all the six books, is unashamedly a horror novel.
New York is afflicted with the opening of a bottomless pit as Rasalom engineers
his re-birth. From the pit spew all manner of nasty creepy, crawly, slithery,
flapping creatures which sting, bite and generally harass as many humans as
they can sink their teeth, tentacles and stingers into. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It's a nineteen fifties B movie," laughs
Paul. "I had a lot of fun with it. But the underlying theme, the one that
carried along all the way from <b>The Keep</b> is: who are you? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"That was the question Cuza had to answer in <b>The
Keep</b> when he had his religion taken away from him. When he thought he could
help against the Nazis, he became a different kind of person. Alan Bulmer
becomes a different kind of person at the end of <b>The Touch</b> and Repairman
Jack's always asking himself who he is in <b>The Tomb</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"In <b>Nightworld</b> the question is posed again:
in the situation of civil panic which erupts in the city, are you going to be
the guy who kicks the old lady in the ribs to get to the last can of beans or
are you going to be something else? Where do you stand? Which side do you fall
on?"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Paul's most recent hardback, <b>Sister Night</b> also
poses this question. The novel concerns the unusual death of a young woman,
which is then investigated by her twin sister. It involves possession and
uncertainty and features a startling twist in the tail.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"To me the biggest horror is being taken over,
whether it be by an idea, a misconception or anything. Becoming totally out of
control, someone you aren't, something less than you should and can and would
be really terrifies me. <b>Sister Night</b> is all about loss of control. The
book was actually written in the middle of my working on <b>Reprisal</b>; I
suddenly got the last plot twist which I'd been thinking about for years, and I
just had to write it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"With regards to the twist, I'm amazed that I have
apparently been able to fool a lot of other writers. Usually writers are one
step ahead of each other, when you read someone else's book, you've generally
tried the same tricks before, so it's so nice when someone can deliver a
punchline which you don't see coming. A lot of writers have called me up and
said they'd never spotted it coming. That's very rewarding."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Continuing with the theme of 'Who Am I', Paul's next
novel is a medical thriller which is being published by Headline under a
different name. "It's a medical school thriller called <b>The Foundation</b>.
I submitted it under the name Colin Andrews because I was tired of my books
being at the bottom of the bookcases in the shops. I also wanted it to stand on
its own merits. This way I felt they would just judge the writing as they
wouldn't know anything about Colin Andrews. As it happens they went crazy over
it, which is great. In Britain it's going to be released as 'F Paul Wilson
writing as Colin Andrews', and I can't figure out the rationale of that. Maybe
they want to take me away from horror, because it's not a horror novel, it's a
suspense novel. It contains a lot of threatened violence and again the theme of
loss of control and an outside influence is present."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-79615755450841023412020-04-14T12:35:00.001+01:002020-04-14T12:35:16.324+01:00UNIQUE DREAMS - THE FANTASY WORLDS OF TIM WHITE<br />
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Tim
White is one of the world's foremost fantasy illustrators. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Ranking
alongside Chris Foss, Jim Burns, Chris Achilleos and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Rodney
Matthews amongst others, his paintings have graced the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">covers
of books by Arthur C Clarke, James Herbert, Clive Barker, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Robert
Heinlein, Robert Silverberg, H P Lovecraft, Bob Shaw and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">many,
many others.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In a career that has
spanned seventeen years </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
fantasy illustration his name is now synonymous with realistic </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">paintings
of the impossible. </span></div>
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<br />
I spoke to Tim at his house near Maidstone where he lives and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">works
with his wife Lyn (herself an author) and their ten year </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">old
daughter.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The obvious subject to talk on
first was what had </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fascinated
Tim in the world of fantasy painting.</span></div>
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<br />'I've always been interested in fantasy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I entered a Blue </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Peter
competition to create a robot way back in the early '60s </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">which
I would have won only I was two months too old - they gave </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">me
a trip to the BBC for my entry instead.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I've always liked the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Dan
Dare comics with Frank Hampson's wonderful paintings.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I went </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
Medway Art College, painted nothing but fantasy and then when </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
left there, the first approach I made was to Pan Books.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">They </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">told
me to go away as the book cover market was all sewn up by a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">handful
of people and that I didn't stand a chance.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">They also </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">asked
if I had ever thought of doing other sorts of illustration!</span></div>
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<br />'Then, in 1974, in the third issue of a magazine called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Science Fiction
Monthly</i> (published by New English Library), there </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
a science-fiction painting competition.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I got the magazine </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">on
a Friday evening and I remember I had to ring them because I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
not sure of the rules or something, and this was about 7.30 </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
the evening.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So I rang them and
amazingly there was someone </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">there
in the art department.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He asked me if I
did SF paintings, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
said that I did, so he told me to forget about the competition </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
to come in and show them my work.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I did
this and they gave </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">me
a commission there and then for a book called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Not-Quite </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Rain</b> which was about acid rain.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">At that time
it was science </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fiction
but now it is fact!</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I did a few bits and
pieces for </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Science Fiction
Monthly</i> [Tim's first black and white piece </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">appears
in issue 7, and his first colour in issue 11] and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">eventually
I was made redundant from my day job and so I went </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">freelance.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My first commission as a freelance artist was
from </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Corgi
Books with the cover to Arthur C Clarke's </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Other Side of </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>the
Sky</b> in 1974.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Other publishers started
to use me following </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that,
and it all just carried on from there.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Like most freelance artists, Tim finds that to make a living, he </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">often
has to take work that he would otherwise turn down.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">seems
to be the bane of the artist that he is unable to paint </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">what
he wants to, more often than not painting to the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">requirements
of a book or an editor's ideas.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I believe I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">could
be a commercial artist and paint what I wanted to,'</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> asserts Tim, 'but the money really isn't there and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">when
you have a family to support you have to go where you can </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">earn
a living.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">That's where book companies
can be life savers!</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'I do paint for pleasure as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>I loved painting unicorns, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">scenes
and characters from C S Lewis' </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Narnia</i> books long
before I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">really
knew the great scope that SF and fantasy offers.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">genre
is just a marvelous carrier for the imagination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'To my way of thinking, reality is all around us, but fantasy </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
something different.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Lots of painters
have painted reality </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">superbly - Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer - who can do better than </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">those
guys?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So the only real area left to
explore is the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">imagination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'I remember the first piece of work I ever saw by Salvadore </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Dali
was on a postcard when I was about fifteen years old.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Metamorphosis of
Narcissus</i>. There is a chess board on </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">it,
and the painting is full of pockets of image and interest.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">had
never seen anything quite like that before.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It was quite a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">shock
seeing it for the first time. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'I think works of the imagination have so much going for </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">them,
so much more reward than in simply painting reality.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Each </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
us has unique dreams and that is what I try and capture as an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">artist. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'I like to have a personal involvement in my pictures.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>When </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
look at other artists' work I want to feel involved.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Does it </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">pull
my imagination and almost transport me?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">That's what really </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">turns
me on about the genre.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Far from being a shrine to his work, Tim's house is almost bare </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
its owner's occupation with the exception of a couple of small </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">framed
prints on the walls.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">His work room too
is of a functional </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">rather
than display nature and yet from cabinets around the room, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">three
dimensional characters from Tim's paintings stare down with </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">maniacal
gleams in their eyes.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">These effigies are
incredibly </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">detailed
and painted and I wondered why Tim created them in three </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">dimensions
when the work he has been commissioned to do is in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">two.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'What I'm after is realism in my pictures,'<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">explained.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Juxtaposition of images from
reality (for </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">example
a field of poppies) with fantasy (for example a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">spacecraft
landing in the field).</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'I do preliminary work in three dimensions but I'm primarily </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">interested
in the final two dimensional image.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When
you're </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">trained
as an artist you can perhaps anticipate the way light </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">will
behave on a textured shape but often it doesn't actually </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">work
out.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If you make a model then you can
understand the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">lighting
completely.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm interested in creating
fantasy as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reality
and this approach helps me to do this.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The detail in the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">models
has come about progressively.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">At first,
when I had a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">problem
with lighting I would build the bit I was having problems </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Then I took to building the
complete thing - depending on </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
time available and whether or not I felt it was vital.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I use </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">photographic
references as well but it is always the final </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">product
that is important, getting the realism into it.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
I commented that some artists, like for example Patrick </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Woodroffe,
actually use reality in their paintings, like </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">photographs,
marquetry for wood texture and so on.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">What was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Tim's
view on this approach?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'My paintings are just that, paintings.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I try to achieve </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">photo-realism
but I wouldn't consider using actual photographs </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
re-touching them.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I can spend weeks and
weeks on the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">preparation
of a piece only to have it not work out.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">important
to me that the picture is plausible and not to have it </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">spoilt,
for example, by bad lighting.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Tim has had two collections of his work published by Paper </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Tiger/Dragon's
World; </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Science Fiction and Fantasy
World of </b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Tim
White</b> (covering his work from 1973 to 1981) and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Chiaroscuro </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(covering
1982 to 1988).</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">His talents have also
been on display </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">on
some video jackets ('A more restrictive market as you are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">tied
to actors' images and the visuals of the film.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">You also </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">lose
all rights in your artwork as they are signed over in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">totality
to the film company') as well as numerous American </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">books
('They pay more than British companies, but again are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">more
restrictive in what you can paint').</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
In a new venture, a small company, Lightning Man, are producing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">four
432 x 286mm art prints of Tim's work.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The prints are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">beautifully
reproduced on quality 170gsm art paper.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The one thing that all the paintings being released as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">posters
have in common is that they are all pictures that were </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">originally
done for myself.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Some have subsequently
been used on </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">book
jackets - the robot fly was used on Terry Pratchett's </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The </b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Dark
Side of the Sun</b> in 1978 and the lion on </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Lion Game</b> by </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">James
H Schmitz in 1979 - but originally they were done for no-one but me.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I always paint such that they could be used
as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">covers
because there is always that possibility, but they were </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">all
ideas and concepts that I did because I wanted to.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Tim White seems to only have one ambition left.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>To do his own </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thing.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I am a painter who is being an
illustrator because I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">have
to be,' </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">he asserts.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I get a lot of satisfaction </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">from
everything I do, but I love to work to create my own dreams </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
worlds.'</span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-88337345695982288292020-04-14T12:26:00.004+01:002020-04-14T12:26:40.859+01:00TAD WILLIAMS - THE STORYTELLER<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad
Williams is one of the most popular and best-selling fantasy writers working in
the genre today, and he has built this impressive reputation on only four
novels and a co-written novella. David Howe spoke to Tad about his career and
about the creative urge which accompanied it.</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“When I look at my High School year
book, there are lots of references like ‘keep writing’ and stuff like that,”
explained Tad when asked about the genesis of his career as a writer. “But I
didn't actually start writing seriously until my mid twenties when I had
exhausted numerous other modes of creative expression.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad’s life has been punctuated with
creative explosions. “I have always been doing at least one major creative
thing on top of whatever I was having to do to make a living,” he revealed.
“There’s been theatre, music, art and broadcasting. One thing I have always
been is a story teller and I think that's the common thread. I wrote songs
which told stories; my art always tended to be more pictorial than abstract ...
I think I am a story teller by nature.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The first piece of ‘serious’ writing
that Tad completed was a screenplay which is still sitting in a drawer. “It’s
got <i>some</i> good bits in it and I always
liked the title: <b>The Sad Machines. </b>It
was a post-apocalyptic military science fiction film idea, but dreadfully,
dreadfully derivative. I look at it now and it’s effectively <b>A Boy And His Dog</b> in the halls of
government.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad decided to write a novel simply
because he had always enjoyed reading fantastic literature. “Tolkien, Ray
Bradbury, Mervyn Peake and Michael Moorcock were among those writers whose work
had the greatest influence on me. My first novel, <b>Tailchaser’s Song,</b> started out as an idea about the nature of cats.
My ex-wife had cats, and I had never lived with cats before and they seemed to
me to be these bizarre alien parasites - and I now have cats of my own, and I
still think of them as bizarre alien parasites. Their attitudes and personalities
intrigued me and so I started to think about what the world would be like from
their point of view and then about a year later I decided to try writing a
novel and used that as my basis.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Having completed the book, Tad’s next
task was to try and get it published, and in this respect he landed on his
feet. “I was hideously lucky. I actually only sent the manuscript to two
publishers. I sent it to Del Rey first of all because they were the ones
currently having the most success with fantasy novels and they sent it back
almost immediately. It was probably returned to me on the same day it arrived
at their offices, and that's not an exaggeration. I actually wrote a letter
saying ‘are you sure anybody actually read this’ and Judy Del Rey wrote back to
me saying ‘this has got to be the first time an author has ever complained
we've kept their manuscript for too short a time’.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“They basically told me that if this was
going to be a best seller then they’d know and they didn’t think it was, so
thank you very much for your time. Then I sent it to another publishers, DAW,
who kept it for quite a while but eventually bought it. I have been with DAW
ever since.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“DAW published it as a hardcover, which
they had just started doing, and it came out in the autumn of 1985 as their
second hardcover release.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">After selling <b>Tailchaser’s Song</b>, Tad had started work on another novel which he
describes as an “Egyptian historical novel”, but when he told DAW that this was
what he was working on they recoiled in horror. “‘No, no, no,’ they said.
‘You’re going to write a fantasy novel because that's what's you’re known for
now’. I didn't want to write another cat-related book and so I mentioned that I
had always wanted to write a big epic fantasy. They said okay, so that’s what I
did. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“I had no idea at the time that it would
take me eight years to complete. My original schedule was to deliver the final
volume in 1988, so I missed that deadline by about four years! Again DAW was
splendid because they saw right away that it was much bigger than I thought it
was going to be and they encouraged me to do what I had to do - to write it as
I wanted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“Once I realised how big it was going to
be - my outline was a hundred and twenty five pages long - my single epic
fantasy novel became a trilogy.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">In any epic fantasy, it is hard to
single out any particular themes, but Tad felt that his trilogy developed as it
was being written. “There are things near and dear to my heart and others that
I often talk about like the unreliability of history, the way that cultures
absorb each other and the vestigial traces that get left behind. Things about
conflict in general both personal and global and about how we are all our own
universes and how you can't tell from outside what's going on inside.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“<b>Memory,
Sorrow and Thorn</b>, which is the overall title of the trilogy, is very much
character-led. There are certain things you have to do in genre fiction.
Readers expect a certain amount of excitement, a certain amount of surprise,
and to have to do some mental work too. I think genre fiction offers you these
particular things. Now that said, I write very character-driven fiction. My
ideas tend to be fairly colourful and idiosyncratic but I bolt them into a very
firm structure where everything ties together and makes sense. The trick is to
find places to let the characters develop and become real within that
structure.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When the first volume of <b>Memory, Sorrow and Thorn</b>, <b>The Dragonbone Chair,</b> was published, it
generated a lot of interest in the UK, something which <b>Tailchaser’s Song</b> had not. The trilogy was finally bought by
Century Hutchinson after a hotly contested auction against Penguin. The faith
shown by the publishers seems to have paid off with each volume of the trilogy
selling more than its predecessor, and the final volume, <b>To Green Angel Tower</b>, making it onto both the <i>New York Times</i> and the <i>Sunday
Times</i> best-seller lists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad was not surprised by this steady
build in interest. “I always said that I thought these books would sell better
as time goes on. I think there are a lot of people like me who love fantasy and
have a soft spot for epic fantasy but are frankly tired and depressed by the
turgid formula stuff they keep seeing. I figured there will be people who would
start the first volume and then put it down because they thought it was a
little slow. Six months later a friend would say ‘Oh you didn't finish it? No,
no, you just have to get past the first part and then it just really takes
off!’ I recently did a signing in Dublin and this guy came up with a new
paperback of <b>The Dragonbone Chair -</b>
the first book, an old and somewhat battered copy of <b>The Stone of Farewell -</b> the second one, and a hardcover of <b>To Green Angel Tower.</b> And I told him
that I could tell exactly how he had come to have all those books. He looked at
me and I said that he had borrowed the first one from a friend, liked it enough
to go out and buy the second one in paperback and then, realising that he would
have to wait forever for the third one, he went back and bought the paperback
of the first one himself, re-read them both and, still waiting for the third
volume, decided that he couldn't wait and so bought it in hardcover or
convinced someone to give it to him as a present. He smiled, leaned over, and opened the cover
of <b>To Green Angel Tower. </b>Inside was
written: ‘Dear Patrick, love Mom, Merry Christmas’.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">When <b>Memory, Sorrow and Thorn</b> was finally complete, Tad’s next project
was a novella called <b>Caliban’s Hour</b>.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“That was a labour of love,” sighs Tad.
“<b>Caliban’s Hour</b> was originally
commissioned by Century Hutchinson when I was over here touring in 1990. Legend were doing a series of Novellas and I
talked with them about this and mentioned that <i>The Tempest</i> was probably my favourite Shakespeare play. I commented
that I had always wondered what happened to Caliban as he really got a raw deal
in <i>The Tempest</i> and the idea for a
Novella was born. I put it aside while I finished the trilogy and by the time I
came to write it, the Legend Novellas series had been stopped and my editor had
left the company. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“I went ahead and wrote it anyway, and
luckily, the new editor still wanted to go with it. I even ended up doing some
illustrations for it as well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Random House are currently due to
publish <b>Caliban’s Hour</b> in October
1994. For the future, Tad is working on another mammoth project.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“I made it clear to my publishers very
early on that I am not a series writer in the same way that David Eddings or
Terry Brooks are. The fact that my first two books - I tend to view <b>Memory, Sorrow and Thorn</b> as one book -
were fantasy was coincidental. They could equally have been written for another
genre. As a result I am not going to write another cat book, and now I am not
going to write another epic fantasy. What I have in mind is still epic and I'm
hoping that my readers who like that quality will come with me. There will be
lots of characters, numerous wild ideas, extremely complicated plot strands and
some truly bizarre things happening. It takes place within numerous virtual
worlds within a computer. The characters are on these various pilgrimages and
they can be travelling through literally anything from an exact recreation of
the Battle of Nicopolis in the late 14th century to the Cretaceous era or to a
cartoon world where the characters sing at you or a place where the kitchen
comes to life at night after the family goes to sleep, or anything really. It
will be quite fantastical and I think it will have a lot of things in common
with my other work.. I'm hoping that people who have not picked up my work
before will give this a try. If they
like what they see they will then hopefully go back and try my fantasy books as
well.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">The new series has the overall title of <b>OTHERLAND</b> and at the moment comprises
four novels, tentatively titled <b>City of
Amber Light</b>, <b>River of Blue Fire</b>,
<b>Mountain of Black Glass</b> and <b>Ocean of White Forever</b>. Tad is looking
forward to working on the books mainly because “the story came to me and I had
to write it”, and that is the mark of a true story teller.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">With
thanks to Tad Williams, Kate Farquhar-Thomson, Deborah Beale and Nicki
Bidecant.<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">CALIBAN’S
HOUR</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">For the forthcoming release of <b>Caliban’s Hour</b>, as well as writing the
Novella, Tad has also completed eight pencil drawings to illustrate the book.
“For a long time, I thought I was going to be a comic artist and then in my
late teens and twenties I did some illustration, cartoon and technical art. I
worked at a place that made film strips for the military and I was famous as
being the only person who could draw hands. People would come running to me
with these beautifully designed helicopter rotor assemblies for me to add a
hand holding a wrench.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“Although I have done quite a lot of
different kinds of art, I haven’t done anything really seriously. In fact I hadn’t
drawn anything for ages, and it was real interesting doing the illustrations
for <b>Caliban’s Hour</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">“I did them in pencil and they’re quite
representational. I tried not to show in
too much detail what the characters look like and I also tried to allow the
reader to project their own impressions on them as well - like, for example,
drawing Caliban with his head turned away so that you can’t see his
features. For most of them I tried to
capture an emotional moment; not necessarily something specific to the plot,
but more of Caliban’s feelings and character, as this is one of the central
themes of the book.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad
Williams Biography</span></b></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">Tad Williams was born in 1957 in the San
Francisco Bay area of California. At the time, his mother was a single parent
and she married his step-father when Tad was between two and three years old.
After finishing High School aged eighteen, Tad decided not to go to college and
instead started on a succession of diverse jobs: he sold shoes, worked in a
Taco bar, worked for a financial company and handled real estate loans and
insurance for people all over the area. Following this he went briefly to the
University of California at Berkeley and dropped out almost immediately because
he was more interested in following his creative urges. At the time he was
playing in a band, and he and some friends were running a no-ID discotheque in
Palo Alto. Over the next few years, Tad attended some classes at the junior
college at the same time as holding down around fifteen other jobs, including
working as a disc-jockey at a local radio station which covered the whole of
the San Francisco area. He ended up doing a radio talk show that ran for about
twelve years. He then decided to go back to University and study History and
possibly Literature as these were his two great loves, and applied to the
prestigious Stanford University on the basis that it was geographically closest
to him. He told them this and they turned him down. However, by the time that
rejection came, Tad had sold his first book, <b>Tailchaser’s Song</b>, which he had been writing at night while working
and going to junior college during the day. He decided to try and make a career
out of writing and took a number of part-time jobs until he was able to earn a
living from writing full time. He separated from, and eventually divorced, his
wife and moved to England at the end of 1992. He is currently planning a
part-time move back to America at the end of 1994 and is engaged to Deborah
Beale, former editorial director at both Random Century and Orion Books. They
plan to marry in the autumn.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">TAD
WILLIAMS</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">BIBLIOGRAPHY<o:p></o:p></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1985 <i>Tailchaser’s
Song</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1988 <i>The
Dragonbone Chair<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1990 <i>Stone
of Farewell<o:p></o:p></i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1991 <i>Child
of an Ancient City</i> (with Nina Kiriki Hoffman)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1993 <i>To
Green Angel Tower</i><o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">1994 <i>Caliban’s
Hour</i> (forthcoming)<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt;">CHILD
OF AN ANCIENT CITY</span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; font-size: 10.0pt; mso-ansi-language: EN-GB; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA; mso-fareast-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-language: EN-GB;">“<b>Child of an
Ancient City</b> started life as a long short story that I had written for <i>Weird Tales.</i> The publishers came back to
me after it had appeared and said that they had a deal with an American
publisher and wondered if I would turn the story into a novel. I was already
two years behind on my trilogy and so I told them that there was no way I could
do that. They then suggested bringing in a collaborator to expand the story for
me. They eventually suggested Nina Kiriki Hoffman who I thought was an
excellent writer, and I agreed to a collaboration. Nina and I sat down together
and decided how we wanted to add to the story, because it really had its own
arc and we didn't want to change it dramatically. We picked areas that were
terse in the short story but would stand some expansion and Nina wrote the new
material which amounted to about as much as the story had been in the first
place, and then we editing it, passing it back and forth between </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; font-size: 10pt;">us.”</span>Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-64110979005163219572020-04-14T12:21:00.007+01:002022-09-06T20:58:28.641+01:00PETER STRAUB - HOUSES OF MYSTERY<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">I have long been an admirer of Peter Straub's </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">work.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">From the early days of <b>Julia </b>(1976) and <b>If You </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Could
See Me Now</b> (1977), through the epic visions of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Ghost
Story</b> (1979) and <b>Shadowland </b>(1980), to his </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">epic
collaboration with Stephen King - <b>The Talisman</b> (1984) - </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">he has maintained a clarity and vision almost unsurpassed by </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">his
contemporaries.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He currently lives in
America but was in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">England
earlier this year to promote his new novel </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mystery </b>and collection <b>Houses Without Doors</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Like all of Peter Straub's work, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery</b> is a multi-layered, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">multi-faceted
book.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It concerns a boy, Tom Pasmore,
who grows up </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
a world of exclusion, where the 'families' enjoy all the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">benefits
and luxuries while others rot in slum dwellings.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">scenario
is all too familiar to anyone that has visited almost </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">any
large city, but Tom's life and background is part of the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">mystery
he is to uncover. I asked Peter how </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mystery </b>came about.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"The mystery was originally going to be about a boy in a cave </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
his connection with the hero of the novel. In a way, the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">novel
retained the same basic plot, that is a family with an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">immense
secret, but revealed it in a wholly different way.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
also an aspect of 'Family Romance', which is a Freudian term </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">referring
to the fantasy that many children have that your real </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">parents
are actually far better, more noble, more handsome, more </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">generous
than the evil trolls in whose care you've been left.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mystery</b>, Tom Pasmore
is raised by evil trolls and he does have a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">real,
far more enlightened parent."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery </b>is arguably
not a fantasy book in any sense and the same </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">can
be said of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>(despite the
fact that it won the 1989 World </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Fantasy
Award). All of Peter's earlier work is quite definitely </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
the horror/supernatural genre - this genre can perhaps more </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">accurately
be described as 'Straub' as the books can defy </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">attempts
to categorise them.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I wondered why the
supernatural </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">element
had disappeared.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"It is still there in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Koko</b>, I think, but
you are right. Only </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">after
I began to see a few reviews that discussed this aspect did </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
realise that a lot of the basic content of my more recent books </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
the same as it always has been, but the top layer of imagery </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">has
been changed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The simple reason is that
I became tired of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
old imagery. I'd exhausted myself and felt that if I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">continued
with it, then it would be more like writing as a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">mechanical
exercise than for pleasure.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"There is some supernatural stuff at the start of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery</b>, but as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">one
friend told me, there's a huge jolt once the detective plot </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">takes
over. There is a sort of shifting of gears. However the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">book
isn't a supernatural novel, it's a far more generalised </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fiction
about the growing up of a young man.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
wanted all of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">background
about Tom to be included because it helps explain his </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">character
and what happens to him - it sets up his destiny in a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">way - and all that is tied into the plot.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"There is a process of trust that happened with </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery</b>. I'm </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">very
pleased with all my early books but there's no doubt that I </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">really
came into my own with </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Ghost Story.</b> That was when I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">realised
what I could do by learning to trust myself.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To fly </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">blind
and to know that somehow I'd land. It used to really bother </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">me
if I didn't know where my book was going and eventually I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">learned
to trust my own instincts.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I build a lot
of material: </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">imagery,
characters, events, into my books early on and these </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">will,
if I pay enough attention to them, tell me where I have to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">go.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"With </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery</b>, I noticed
that there was one character who really </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">demanded
the centre of the stage - the old man, Lamont von </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Heilitz.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">When I couldn't balance his power with the
emotional </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">power
of the other aspects of the book - the boy in the cave - </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
novel changed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Once Lamont von Heilitz
started talking I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">realised
that he was at the centre of the novel, there were old </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">murders
that he had solved incorrectly and that these murders </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">were
going to travel beneath the surface of the book until the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">very
end.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Despite this I wanted a tone to be
there at the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">beginning
to say that it is not a detective novel but that it is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">a
book about a detective."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Koko </b>and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mystery </b>followed a fairly
lengthy break after the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">publication
of the epic fantasy novel </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Talisman</b>,
co-authored </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with
Stephen King.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">What was the reason for
the break?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"It was both exhilarating and bruising writing </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Talisman</b>. Not </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">because
Steve was insensitive, rude or tactless - he's not - </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">he's
an absolutely generous, sensitive, smart, kind ... he's a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">real
boy scout in a way. But on the other hand he's no weakling, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">especially
as a writer.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So I felt a little mauled,
and I was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">also
exhausted, so I announced to anybody who cared - mainly my </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wife - that I was going to take some time off. I took a year, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
I just read, I took trips, I stayed up late, I had some fun </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
I generally took things easy as well as starting to formulate </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">some
ideas for </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko</b>. Right at the end of that period I was </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reading
a book called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"><b></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Freudian Fallacy</b> that was about Freud, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">cocaine
and brain neurology (it's not a very good book because </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
writer hated Freud). Something about the connection between </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">hypnotism
and epilepsy really stung me and I realised I could </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">write
a story about a guy who makes murder look like epilepsy </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">through
hypnotism.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Then I realised that it was a
small boy who </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">did
it to an even smaller boy, and I couldn't not write it.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">little
vacation had ended! The story was called '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Blue Rose' and it </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">took
about three or four months to write.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This led me further </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">into
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>and eventually,
over the course of three years, that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">developed
into the completed novel."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Another short story completed in that period was '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Juniper </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Tree' - where did that fit in?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br /></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">"'The Juniper Tree' was
written in the first summer I was doing </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko</b>. I had bought a brownstone in New York, and I
had to spend </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">a couple of months there, by myself. There was such a wrench </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">between
that and my normal life, that I didn't trust myself to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">write
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>because I
thought I'd botch it up, but I thought I </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">could
write a short story. It was after I read a book called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Lover</b> by Marguerite Duras that I had this irresistible notion, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">just
like with '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Blue Rose', of a
little boy being seduced. Again </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">this
idea seemed really powerful, and I took the whole summer to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">do
it. I really enjoyed writing that, I thought it really </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">worked."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Both '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Blue Rose' and '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The Juniper Tree' appear in the
first </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">collection
of Peter's short stories, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Houses Without Doors</b>,
just </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">published
by Grafton.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I wondered if Peter found it
easier to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">write
short fiction.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"I actually think it's harder to do short pieces and I hardly </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">ever
do it. Both '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Blue Rose' and '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Juniper Tree' worked, they
were </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">both
related to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko</b>, they were part
of the emotional landscape </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>and they have
the same emotional colour as </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko</b> - really </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">dark,
bleak and hard. Generally I can't write short pieces and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">when
I do, they all turn out to be two hundred pages long.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"I was thrilled by Robert Aickman's collection </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Wine Dark </b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Sea</b>,
especially a story called '</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Into The Woods' which
really moved </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">me. I finished a short novel called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mrs God</b> right after I read </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
Aickman collection. I wanted it to be open to all kinds of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">interpretation,
not rounded off, really enigmatic in the way that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">much
of Aickman's stuff is."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Mrs God</b> also appears
in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Houses Without Doors </b>as well as another </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">short
novel (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Buffalo Hunter</b>,
inspired by a show of sculpture </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
New York) and several other short stories.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Finally I wondered </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">what
plans Peter had following </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Houses Without
Doors</b>?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"The next thing is a book which follows a direction similar to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
material in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Houses Without Doors</b>.
My 'genre' has a lot to do </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with
looking at violence in a way that is peculiar to me. I'm </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">looking
for the conjunctions between what could be called the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">sacred
and the violent. It seems to me that they have some </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">powerful
territory in common which can only be found in that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">conjunction.
I think the next book, which will culminate the </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">themes
I began in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>and continued
through </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mystery -</b> all the<i> </i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"><i></i></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Blue Rose</i> business,
will be in that spot where violence meets the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">sacred.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This means that it has to be seen from an extremely </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">individual,
slightly crazed, viewpoint, enabling me to do what I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">like
to do best; examine the world in a detailed way that is full </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
feeling and has a kind of surreal alertness.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I think that <i>is </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
fantastic.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">That viewpoint incorporates
everything you can </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">find
in any supernatural novel, anything goes, and it's seen in a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">way
that justifies it. I'm not at all interested in fantasy </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">novels <i>per se</i>, I'm not excited by unicorns, misty maidens, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
sort of stuff, but you can incorporate that in this </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">viewpoint
so that it has twice the emotional power. Everything is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">on
a razor edge and it can tip either way into really appalling </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">territory.
Now that's fun!"</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">My thanks to Peter Straub, and also to Andy Lane and Debbie </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Collings
for their help with the interview. </span></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-83671312880627160212020-04-14T12:09:00.001+01:002020-04-14T12:09:34.955+01:00INTERVIEW WITH ANNE RICE<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">In 1976 a book appeared by an unknown
author which purported to be a real-life interview with a vampire. <b>Interview With The Vampire</b> was hailed as a classic and it
established its author as a name to be watched.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The author was Anne Rice, who has since gone on to
expand the series with <b>The Vampire Lestat</b>, <b>The Queen of the Damned</b>
and now <b>The Tale of the Body Thief</b>. She has also dabbled in Egyptian
mythology with <b>The Mummy</b>, and witches in <b>The Witching Hour</b>.
Despite all these links with the supernatural genre, Rice is reluctant to
discuss vampires, or her use of these characters, and when asked claims a
mainstream approach to her work.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I can't claim to have a great deal of interest in
the genre," she states. "I write what I write and it comes out being
very weird and unclassified and always has done. So the word genre has sort of
been an enemy word for me. I hope my work transcends the genre, I hope it does
everything a serious book ought to do."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">If Rice is not writing genre books, then what sort of
books are they? How does she classify herself?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"They are philosophical novels. They concern
supernatural heroes, but are very thoughtful philosophical novels. They are
also meant to be sensuous and thrilling. If I look back and think of the novels
that have influenced me, they are things like <b>Jane Eyre</b> and <b>Wuthering
Heights</b> and Mary Shelley's <b>Frankenstein</b> and Dickens' <b>Great
Expectations</b> ... works like that. What is <b>Macbeth</b>? It's got three
witches and a ghost, and <b>Hamlet</b> ...? I feel that you can take
supernatural characters and use them in a complex psychological and philosophical
novel. You can write about the deepest things you have to write about, you can
say the things that are most pressing for you to say. There's no reason not to
work with those characters in that way. It's only a modern prejudice that says
if fiction is going to deal with supernatural characters it's going to be
limited. Three hundred years ago no-one thought putting Mephistopheles in a
play limited the scope of the play."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">This point I wholeheartedly agreed with. Categorisation
isn't fair, because if you only read in one restricted genre then you are going
to miss out on good stories elsewhere. It's the story that's important, not the
pigeonhole.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Absolutely. I think In the last twenty years
there's been a lot of strident marketing of books as genre books, because
that's the only way that the people who read those books can get to them.
Publishers have become so adamant that the definition of a serious novel is
being a realistic novel that they have just jumped ship on literature. The
science fiction world is a perfect example. It's filled with readers who want
poetry and lyricism and heroic figures and depth and they have no time to read
a novel about divorce in Connecticut. They do not want to waste their time
reading something that no-one in the last seven thousand years would have
considered a worthy subject for serious fiction, so they've gone off and made
their own world. For a long time the mainstream fiction world ignored science
fiction, but what finally happened was that SF developed so much financial
momentum that it could no longer be ignored and the books started to pop up on
the bestseller lists and everyone started to realize that the science fiction
part of the bookstore was bigger than the rest. But does genre really apply? I
don't think so. I think it's a negative word that people have used so that they
don't have to deal intellectually with science fiction. I've done signings in
science fiction stores and the readers who come to those signings are the among
the most sophisticated people. I love all my readers; science fiction readers
are fabulous, they include secretaries and file-clerks and insurance salesmen -
all these people enjoy thinking about the meaning of life and infinity and
whether there is a God and so forth, and science fiction is the fiction in
which they find all those questions addressed."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">These are also questions addressed in <b>The Tale of the
Body Thief</b>. The book again concerns the vampire Lestat, but this time he is
in a far more philosophical role. The opportunity arises for him to swap bodies
with a human, and he wants so much to be human that he agrees to the exchange.
And yet when he is human, he finds that this isn't perhaps quite what he
remembered or expected. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I was trying to do a lot in that novel, and one of
them was to try and expose the vanity of the three works that preceded it. I
was trying to say: alright, I've made vampirism seem very romantic and I've
done that largely by having the vampires walk around saying, 'oh we wish we
were human again'. Do they really, or is this not a crock? I wanted to expose
that, because I think that's a device that was used in literature for
centuries. We write about evil by making a regretful hero who wins our
sympathy, but what we really enjoy are his antics as an evil person. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"In fiction the bad guys are often more interesting
but I have a suspicion that in real life it's not that way. I think one of the
things that was so disappointing and appalling about <b>The Silence of the
Lambs</b> is that there's no Hannibal Lecter out there. That's such a literary
idea: the intelligent serial killer. They really tend to be horribly mundane,
unimaginative, clumsy and awful people."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">In Lestat Rice has created a marvellous antihero, he
sees himself outside everything, and questions whether he is evil or not to
great philosophical lengths.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I think the questions he's always asking are the
questions I'm asking every day of my life. I'm using him as a colourful hero,
but basically it's the same question. One of the things that intrigues me the
most is this whole question of what we are willing to do to get what we want in
life. What people are <u>really</u> willing to do. On a very simple level, we
are obviously not willing to go to Somalia to feed people, we want to stay here
even though we know they are starving. But there are different levels on which
we make those choices, we are not going to do certain things because we want
our comforts, we want our security, our ambition, the rewards of our particular
career. When I was younger those things didn't seem to me to be so important
but they do now, so to me <b>The Tale of the Body Thief</b> is a lot about
that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Does everybody have a price in some way? Is it
just that for many people it is very, very, very high? For example, the
character of David Talbot intrigued me. Is there really a person who would turn
away from eternal life like that, who would just absolutely refuse. I think
there is, but I'm not that person. I wanted to show Lestat being given the
choice of saving his soul, entering back into the human drama. As it happens he
wound up saying 'Boring!' I think we work that way a lot in life."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">It is interesting that this is the attitude that Lestat
finally takes, because in the first book of the series, the vampires themselves
were bored with their eternal life.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I tried to put that in the first book, that they
often died of boredom if they couldn't connect, but that was supposed to be
those that were the least imaginative and the least brilliant. Lestat is
ideally the hero that can last forever, can do anything."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Interview With The Vampire</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;"> was Rice's
first published novel and it caused quite a stir as she took it around various
publishers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It wasn't a struggle to get it published, it was
accepted fairly quickly about nine months after I wrote it, but the rejections
it did get were just ghastly. People were telling me to throw the book out.
They were outraged that someone would dare write a book like that. I remember
one agent who turned it down said 'I don't know what it is, it's not black comedy
and it's not tongue in cheek, I can't tell what it's supposed to be, so
obviously I'm not the person to handle it.' And another person wrote back to
say it should be published as a paperback with a sexy, lurid cover, focusing
principally on the secrets about vampires. It was all very discouraging. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"After it was published it was a raging success in
some respects, it got a lot of attention and a lot of wonderful reviews but it
got other reviews that were so vicious they were just unbelievable. There was
one which I didn't see at the time - I came across it in a reference book in
the library years after - in which the reviewer said that the whole thing
smacked of a computer. That every hot subject of the moment had been taken and
thrown into a novel. They also said something about the stunning cynicism with
which this has been published as serious fiction. I couldn't believe it! I'm
glad I didn't see it at the time, I probably would have been crushed."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Following <b>Interview With The Vampire</b>, Rice's
second book concentrated on the character of Lestat, this time through his own
words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Lestat preyed on me the whole time I was writing
the first book. He came to life spontaneously and rather than my creating him,
he just developed. Immediately I wanted to write another book from his point of
view, telling his side of the story. That's something that fascinates me in
fiction anyway. I think one of the greatnesses of a book like <b>Anna Karenina</b>
is that Tolstoy is so kind and compassionate to every character in it and you
understand everybody's point of view: Anna's, her lover's, her husband's. I've
never been particularly satisfied or happy with fiction that doesn't do
that."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">An interesting aspect of Rice's vampire fiction is that
she maintains the pretence throughout that these characters are real, and that
the books have been genuinely written by vampires. This works very well and I
wondered how much pre-planning had gone into the titles.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I don't plan very far. Right now I know there will
be a fifth book and that it will grow out of the section in <b>The Tale of the
Body Thief</b> where David and Lestat talk about David possibly having seen God
and the Devil in a café. I know it will go in that direction but I don't know
yet what will happen and I'm deliberately not planning it. I don't even know
which characters will come to the fore. The one character I want to get back to
over and over again is Armand, he gets neglected when I get carried away with
something else. I wanted him to be in the most recent book but there turned out
to be no place for him."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The book prior to <b>The Tale of the Body Thief</b> was <b>The
Queen of the Damned</b>, a very densely populated novel, spanning centuries of
time, and requiring a lot of concentration from the reader. At the start of <b>The
Tale of the Body Thief</b> Lestat apologises that this new novel is not as
populated as the last. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Right after I finished <b>The Queen of the Damned</b>
we went to Hawaii for a vacation and I found it impossible to relax. I couldn't
stop thinking, writing, taking notes and I knew right away that I wanted to
write another book that was far more intimate about Lestat because I felt
completely too far away from him at the end of <b>The Queen of the Damned</b>,
and the novel had left me unsatisfied. I had enjoyed working with that grand scheme
and trying to pull off things that really shouldn't work but I really wanted to
get back to a tale told by Lestat."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Rice's intention with the vampire chronicles is that
they will eventually form a library documenting the vampires on Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It's important to me that they be like volumes on
a shelf, you can pull down any one volume and read it at any point. You can
start with any one volume and you can go to any other. That's the way I see
them now. Each one is written to be independent of the others. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">All of Rice's books have been hefty tomes, the biggest
being <b>The Witching Hour</b> which weighs in at 1207 paperback pages. "I
have a hard time writing anything small!" she admits. "By the time
I've put in everything that I want to put in they are enormous. <b>The Vampire
Lestat</b>, for instance, is a book which doesn't really finish, it just stops!
I was really swept away just by the ideas of <b>The Witching Hour</b>. Was this
family evil, maybe they weren't. Was the ghost that haunted them evil? Was he
really a ghost? I really wanted to get into that, and of course the thing that
made the book so long was that right in the middle I got totally carried away
writing a history of the family! Of course people were saying cut, cut, cut!
And I said no, no, no! None of my readers ever said cut, but when publishers
see a book that thick they groan because it's so hard to publish it. Every step
is so difficult.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"In fact, I slightly miscalculated with <b>The
Witching Hour</b> because I didn't print it out until the end, so I had no idea
how long it was. When I cam to print it, it took about two days to come off as
I had a dot-matrix printer at that time. I remember going in and seeing page
one thousand roll out and thinking that this book was a little long. But it
really was the length I thought it should be. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"The more I think about it, the more convinced I am
that endings are the most artificial part of fiction writing. There are few
really great endings and I'm really bad at endings. The books always mutate and
take off in a different direction at the end, every time.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I thought <b>The Witching Hour</b> had the best
ending I'd ever written until people began to ask 'what happened?' I thought
that was a wonderful ending, that was the most complete ending I'd ever done.
But readers were furious! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I've completed a sequel to <b>The Witching Hour</b>
called <b>Lasher</b>, which will be published in the fall. I'm not sure that it
is a book you can read without reading the other first. It's very closely
dependent. I just finished doing the corrections on it and I found myself
wondering if it stands as well on its own as the others did? My suspicion is
that a lot of people will read it and then go back and read <b>The Witching
Hour</b> but I really don't know."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-68252519683666059622020-04-14T12:07:00.000+01:002020-04-14T12:07:49.698+01:00TURTLE TATTLE<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Somewhere on Earth there may be someone who has not come
across the work of Terry Pratchett. His books regularly grace the upper reaches
of the bestseller lists and each new title is received with even more acclaim
than the last.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">For Terry, however, writing has always been in his
blood. "I started writing," he explains, "because when I was
about twelve, a teacher at school asked us to write a short story as a project.
I got twenty out of twenty for mine and it was printed in the school magazine."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Inspired by this success, Terry polished the story up a
bit, got his aunt to type it out, and sent it off to a magazine called <b>Science
Fantasy</b> who bought it. "I got paid fourteen pounds for it and bought
myself a typewriter with the money. My mother was so impressed that she paid
for me to have touch typing lessons, leaving me with a typewriter and the
ability to use it quickly." <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Terry's first novel was <b>The Carpet People</b> which
he started when he was about seventeen and finished when he turned twenty. By
this time Terry had started working for his local newspaper as a journalist and
became friendly with a small press publisher called Colin Smythe. Colin saw the
manuscript for <b>The Carpet People</b> and published it in 1971, followed by
four other books: <b>The Dark Side of the Sun </b>(1976), <b>Strata</b> (1981),<b>
The Colour of Magic</b> (1983) and <b>The Light Fantastic</b> (1986).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">With this last title, it became apparent to both Terry
and Colin that there was a bit of a problem. "It was a bit embarrassing
with the publication of <b>The Light Fantastic</b>," Terry reveals,
"because we realised that Colin had got hold of something which a small
press publisher dreads: a best selling book. Colin was not set up to cater for
a national demand and it was clear to both of us that sooner or later things
would have to change and so we decided to do something while we were still
friends. We reached an arrangement whereby he became my agent and he arranged
for Gollancz to publish hardcovers of the next three books; <b>Equal Rites</b>
(1987), <b>Mort</b> (1987) and <b>Sourcery</b> (1988)."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Corgi had previously published paperback editions of <b>The
Colour of Magic</b> (1985) and <b>The Light Fantastic</b> (1986), using an
artist called Josh Kirby to provide the covers. Kirby was contracted by
Gollancz to do the hardcover jackets as well, while Corgi continued publishing
the paperbacks. "And the rest," Terry smiles, "is
geography!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The books in question are now known generically as the
Discworld novels, and they feature a world, not totally dissimilar to our own,
in which magic works and people go about their business in their own way, and
cope with all that life throws at them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">One major difference is that the Discworld is flat and
is held up by four giant elephants which are in turn standing on the back of
Great A'Tuin, a giant turtle which swims eternally through space. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Ludicrous though that concept may be," Terry
admits, "the idea that the world is flat and goes through space on the
back of an enormous turtle is one of the great commonplace myths of mankind.
The four elephants were a kind of Indo-European subset of that myth. I
embroidered it an awful lot, but the basic shape of the Discworld is straight
out of mythology."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">While the world they inhabit may be somewhat fanciful,
the characters are anything but. Terry delights in creating recognisable
people. His popular band of players include Rincewind the wizard, his faithful
Luggage (a packing case on legs which is devoted to Rincewind and follows him
everywhere, barging into people and things with no regard for decorum), Granny
Weatherwax, a warts-and-all witch who deals with the rigours of the modern
world in the only way she knows how (rudeness and bluster mainly) and the
Librarian of the magical Unseen University who has been accidentally
transformed into a large orangutan.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">One of the more popular characters is Death. Death is an
entity who speaks in hollow capitals, who everyone meets at least once, and who
has made an appearance in every book so far. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Death came about because I needed to get a
particular gag in <b>The Colour of Magic</b> and he had to be a mobile
creature. So I introduced him, and subsequently realised that there was a lot
of mileage in the character as well as being fun to write for. After a while I
realised that the readers were more or less waiting for him to turn up somewhere
in the proceedings too, so he tends to have a walk-on part in most of the
books."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Terry reveals that he tends to think of his characters
as "film stars under contract" and he uses them as and when the idea
is right for them to appear. As he dryly comments, "If I listened to
feedback I would have written thirteen books about Rincewind and the Luggage. I
occasionally aim to go in new directions so that maybe the reader can't be one
hundred per cent certain about what Terry's going to write next.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Rincewind hasn't appeared since <b>Eric</b>, and
he will not appear again until I have a book which I know will be a suitable
vehicle for him. Rather than re-use old characters, I prefer to invent new ones
to do different things with.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler [a salesman who appears
whenever there is a large crowd of people, with a tray around his neck, laden
with inedible pies, suspect sausages and various other partially cooked animal
parts on sticks] very clearly turns up in <b>Small Gods</b>, although his name
in that book is Cut-Me-Own-Hand-Off Dhblah. His appearance was like Sidney
James turning up in a film and basically playing Sidney James - as he did. It's
a signal to the readers that this is a character we know and love."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Moving onto the subject of humour, I commented that it
seemed apparent that while Terry took writing very seriously, he was not necessarily
serious about what he was actually writing about. Terry is quick to point out
that I am completely wrong in my assessment.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I am quoting almost verbatim G K Chesterton,"
he admonished, "who said that it is quite wrong to think that 'serious' is
the opposite of 'funny'. The opposite of 'serious' is 'not serious'. The
opposite of 'funny' is 'not funny'. Now there are some people who are both
'funny' and 'serious'. Ben Elton might be considered to be one of those. And
there are some people who are both 'funny' and 'not serious' and we might put
Benny Hill in that category. There are even some people who are 'not funny' and
'not serious' and we might put John Major there ... the point is that these
things are no more opposites than 'black' is the opposite of 'triangular'. So
there are some things in the books that I take very seriously indeed but you
have to work out which bits they are!"<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Terry revealed that he was happier with the later
Discworld books. "For example, the subject of <b>Moving Pictures</b> always
fascinated me. One of the things that has happened in the late nineteenth and
twentieth centuries is that people have been given opportunities where there
were previously none. The central myth of Hollywood is that some good-looking
waitress can go off to Hollywood and become the most famous woman in the world.
We know it didn't work for nine hundred and ninety nine thousand of them but it
did for one or two and that's all you need to build up the myth. <b>Moving
Pictures</b> makes that point. It was about fame and dreams; I don't like
Hollywood but you can't help but recognise the incredible pull it has."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">So far, the Discworld novels have been appearing at the
rate of two a year but the rate is going to slow down to one a year following
publication of the next book, <b>Lords and Ladies</b> in November. "There
will not be a Discworld novel published in the spring although there will be
another young adult novel (<b>Johnny and the Dead</b>) which isn't finished
yet."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Terry went on to say that the reason behind this was in
no way due to a lack of ideas. "It's simply that two things are happening.
One is that for five years I've been writing an average of close to three
successful books a year, and I thought it might be nice to spend six months
just enjoying myself; and the other thing is that the business of being Terry
Pratchett is beginning to occupy more and more time. There is the mail, of
course, there are talks, and requests for signings and to attend conventions
all over the world. All this takes up time and I need to have the time to
manage it all."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">As Terry is relatively prolific, I asked whether writing
came easily to him, or whether he really had to work at it. "Yes," he
replied with a smile. "Both the statements you have just made are correct.
I find it easy to write <u>and</u> I have to work at it. Sometimes thousands of
words will come spilling out effortlessly onto the page, but there are other
times when you sit there and you just cannot work. But yes, I enjoy doing it.
It seems a natural thing to do, because throughout my life, by and large, I
have had to assemble words in a certain pleasing way in order to make a
living."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Lords and Ladies</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">, "bears the same
relationship to <b>A Midsummer Night's Dream</b> as <b>Wyrd Sisters</b> bore to
<b>Macbeth</b>," hints Terry. "It has the witches in again. The one
after that won't appear until November 1993, and that will probably be set in
Ankh Morpork and feature the guards [from <b>Guards! Guards!</b>] and the Fresh
Start Club for the Newly Undead [from <b>Reaper Man</b>], and possibly even
Gaspode [from <b>Moving Pictures</b>]. It's going to be what you might call an
Ankh Morpork-intensive one.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Some people might like me to kill off all the
Discworld characters and run the turtle into a black hole, but I like them too
much. It's obviously going to end one day - they'll probably put the last
manuscript on my coffin - but it is going to slow down for the moment because
there are other things I want to do."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif; letter-spacing: -0.15pt;">With thanks to Helen Connolly at Transworld Publishers,
and, of course, to Terry Pratchett.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-69938987292760503752020-04-14T12:04:00.002+01:002020-04-14T12:04:35.969+01:00PIKE FISHING<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">The market for a fantasy or horror novel is very </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">broad.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It can extend from the younger readers, still
in their </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">teens,
to the proverbial old grannies in their cardigans sitting </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">by
the fire.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">However, in this day and age,
a teenager is just as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">likely,
if not more so, to be reading comics or sitting glued to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
television set than enjoying a novel.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">How then, do you turn </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">this
potential market back to the written word?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
This is something that author, Christopher Pike, has been doing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
America since 1984.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Pike's books are
defined as 'young </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">adult'
which conjures up visions of the mass of teen-fiction in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">this
country.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Pike, however, is not quite like
that.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">His </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stories,
although aimed at the teen market, are often tales which </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stem
from one basic fantastic assumption.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I don't see </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">myself
as writing books for young adults' he explains, 'I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">just
write books which happen to be about them.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The standard </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">young
fiction market in this country, doesn't treat the readers </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
if they are intelligent.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Most of the
books are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">consequentially
just dull.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Pike has no illusions about his writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>He writes for himself </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
much as anyone else, and his only concession to the market </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
he has made his own is that you won't find buckets of blood </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">or
graphic sex in his novels.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">As with most
teen-aimed fiction, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
staples of young love and adolescent problems are touched </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">upon,
but Pike has the knack of knowing where to stop and the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">books
are the better for it.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">'You
obviously have to include </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">things
that relate to the kids, like first love or problems at </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">school
and the like.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And I deal with that, but
you have to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">remember
that the reader is intelligent and not to try too hard </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
write for a teenage market.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
The first two titles to be published in the UK, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Spellbound </b>and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Chain Letter</b> met with
good critical acclaim, and, aided by an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">effective
advertising campaign, got the books into the adult </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">sections
of most bookstores. In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Chain Letter</b>, Pike takes the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">premise
of a gang of kids who accidentally knock down an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">anonymous
man one night while they are driving.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">They bury him, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">but
later a chain letter is sent to one of the gang with an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">instruction
of a task to be performed.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Slowly the
demands of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">letter
become more and more bizarre, centering on the individual </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fears
and phobias of the kids.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">To break the
chain means that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">something
bad will happen to you, but how does the mysterious '</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">caretaker'
of the letter know so much about the kids? </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Indeed,
who is the caretaker?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Pike builds this
scenario up well, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
the final denouement is well handled. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Spellbound </b>is not </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">quite
as good, dealing with the fairly unlikely premise that a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">human
can exchange bodies with an animal though projection of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">mental
power. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><br />
Before turning to writing Pike (whose real name is Kevin </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">McFadden
- 'My middle name is Christopher and Pike was a nice </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">short
last name and the combination was just a spur of the moment </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thing.')
was a computer programmer who also dabbled in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">painting.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He turned to writing simply to
try and satisfy a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">desire
to tell a good story.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Soon to see publication are </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Last Act</b> in November
while </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Gimme a </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Kiss </b>is scheduled for January 1990.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">With
further books to come, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
well as a large horror novel for the adult market, Christopher </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Pike
is definitely going places, and with luck he will bring his </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">young
audience with him.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-30866683169316393612020-04-14T11:32:00.002+01:002020-04-14T11:32:24.190+01:00KIM NEWMAN<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Alternate dream universes peopled with Humphrey </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Bogart,
Edward G Robinson and Peter Lorre, ancient vampiric </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">creatures
with the power to shape dreams into a pseudo-reality </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
a modern day messiah, whose aspirations become his followers' </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reality.
Hardly your run-of-the-mill subjects for fiction, but </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">then
Kim Newman is not a run-of-the-mill author.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Born in 1959, Newman is today perhaps best known for his early </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">morning
slots on Channel 4, reviewing the latest film releases, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">but
the sheer volume of research and work that has seen print </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">mark
him as an acknowledged expert in film subjects ranging from </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
macabre to the western. This love of film and literature </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">spills
over into his books, perhaps most evidently in his first </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">novel,
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"><b></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Night Mayor</b>, a
whirlwind race through a film noir </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">inspired
nightmare. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Jago </b>is his most
recent novel, with </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bad </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Dreams</b> being published between the two. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
If you thought that Newman had just written three novels, you </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">would
think wrong, as there are more to discover lurking under </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
pseudonym of Jack Yeovil. 'I acknowledge all my </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">illegitimate
children,' Kim, alias Jack, laughs. 'I make </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">no
attempt to conceal the fact that I write as Jack Yeovil as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">well.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The reason I write as Jack is not to disassociate myself </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">from
that work, I'm just trying to say that these are different </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">types
of books. A good example is Ed McBain and Evan Hunter </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">neither
of whom are real people. They're really a guy called Sal </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Lombino,
but I tend to see Jack Yeovil as the Ed McBain and Kim </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Newman
as the Evan Hunter.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'There are other, more practical, aspects like, for example, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
no-one really wants to publish more than one book by an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">author
a year and I felt that I could write more than one book a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">year,
more than one type of fiction © I could keep two careers </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">going
at the same time.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
The first of the Jack Yeovil titles to see print was </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Drachenfels </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(Games
Workshop 1989). This is an adventure novel with a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">difference - a play is staged to celebrate the death of the evil </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Drachenfels,
but the players stir up more than cobwebs and dust </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
the staging of the drama progresses.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
I asked Kim what the chronology of his books was. 'I first </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wrote
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Night Mayor</b> in
late 1982 as a novella but it became too </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">long
so I left it. Then in 1984 or 1985, I completed an initial </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">draft
of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bad Dreams</b> which
didn't sell and just hung around. Then, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">getting
depressed, I sat down in early 1987 and wrote in a week a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">book
called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bloody Students</b>,
which was, I suppose the first Jack </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Yeovil
novel, although it wasn't a Jack Yeovil novel at the time! </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">And
from about 1979 onwards I was vaguely working on </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Jago</b>.T</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">hen, in 1988, I decided to write </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Night Mayor </b>properly </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
that sold to Simon and Schuster! On the back of that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">everything
else I had written sold as well. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Night Mayor</b> wasn't the first book published though, I </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">think
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Drachenfels</b> came out
first - by about two weeks!'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Jack Yeovil has so far written seven books. Five (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Drachenfels</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Demon Download</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Krokodil Tears</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Come Back Tour</b> and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Beasts in </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Velvet</b>)
have been published by Games Workshop. A sixth title </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Genevieve Undead</b>) is still with
them and it should see </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">publication
at some future date, and a seventh book is just </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">available
from Grafton Books. This is </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bloody Students</b>.
'That </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
written at a time when I'd been writing quite a while and I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
just a bit depressed as nobody had bought my stuff,' </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">recalled
Kim. 'I reasoned that if I wrote a book in a week </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">then,
even if it sold for something pathetic, even if it sold for </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">five
hundred pounds, that would still be more than I'd earned in</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">a
week before. And if it didn't sell - what was a week! I didn't </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">actually
give up anything - and I even took the weekend off as </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">well.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Bloody Students</b> concerns a college©full of guys and gals doing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">what
students do - talking, mixing, partying and so on. Then a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">virus
is released and the kids start to succumb to its effects - </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">mainly
a feeling of well-being and a hugely enhanced sexual </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">drive.
Unfortunately this is followed by aggression and blood-lust - hence the
title.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'It is a typical student novel in many ways, but I think I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">can
exclusively reveal that the next Jack Yeovil that I want to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">do
is a teenage slasher novel to be called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Judy's Turn to Cry</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">from
the Lesley Gore song. It's about teenagers being horrible to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">each
other in a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Carrie </b>sort of
way.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
Poles apart from slasher novels is Kim's new book (under his own </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">name
this time) </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Jago</b>. I wondered
where that fitted into the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wider
picture. 'It started with various people sitting around </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
commonroom at Sussex University and talking about what we </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">were
going to do when we grew up. I knew I was destined for long </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">term
misery and unemployment - this was the first recession, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Margaret
Thatcher had just been elected, graduate unemployment </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
at an all time high, and I knew I had no future whatsoever, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">so
it was suggested that I write a big thick bestselling novel.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'All I can say is that </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Jago</b> is big and thick, and that the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">original
intention was to write a commercial book. I always </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wanted
to produce something that was broader in its appeal than </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">just
to genre fans - those people who liked </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Night Mayor </b>and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Bad Dreams</b>. I also
thought it would be nice to have something </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
didn't need as much explanation as for example </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Night </b></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mayor</b>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
'The biggest influence, as with most people of my generation, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
Stephen King's </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>'Salem's Lot</b>. It's
interesting, but I believe </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">King
got most of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US"><b style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">'Salem's Lot </b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">from
Grace Metalious who wrote </span><b><span style="font-family: Times New Roman, serif;">Peyton Place</span><span style="font-family: Courier New;">.</span></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> If you
compare the two there are a lot of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">parallels
that I think King added deliberately. He took the plot </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Dracula </b>and the
setting of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Peyton Place</b> and combined
them to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">superb
effect. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
'I wanted to do something with that structure: lots of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">characters,
a small community, with a good sense of the history </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
the community. A lot of feel about the past in it. I also </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wanted
to set it in England, and I grew up close to a village </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
inspired the one in the book. Once I had the setting, I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">knew
that it had to have a big idea to it and you can't get much </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">bigger
than religion. I'm interested in religion, and at the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">time
I was outlining it there was a lot of talk about the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Moonies,
and subsequently the Scientologists, and that whole cult </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">idea
intrigued me a lot. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The book grew organically rather than being a pot pourri of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">ideas.
It's taken a long time to write, but the central elements </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
characters have been there since the early '80s when I first </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">outlined
it. A lot of the images from the latter half of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">book
date from that period as well.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
The eponymous Jago is a self-styled messiah with the power to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">make
others believe what he wishes them to believe and is a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">powerful
and dangerous force in the novel. I commented that the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reader
is never allowed into Jago's head - you never know exactly </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">who
or what he is (or thinks he is). </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The literary precedent for that is </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Dracula</b>, where you never </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">really
know Dracula. You see him in different forms but you </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">don't
get inside his head. Another influence that I wanted to </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">get
in the book was Wells' </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Invisible Man</b>.
That has a great </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">narrative
structure, it has lots and lots of viewpoints but </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Griffin
- the invisible man - isn't one of them, so he is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">invisible
to you, the reader. Wells disguises it brilliantly by </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">having
a long section narrated by Griffin where he is telling you </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">something
direct - in fact he's telling someone else in the story </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">-
which means that you don't have to trust him. I thought that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
a great pun on him being invisible, and what being invisible </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">really
means.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
With </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Jago </b>available in
hardback, and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Bloody Students</b> published in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">paperback
in November, I wondered what we could expect next from </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Kim/Jack.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
'Certainly I think I'll be staying in the horror genre: the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">next
three Kim Newman books I have outlined have horror as their </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">basis,
but my whole outlook is that I don't want to write the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">same
novel again. Many authors do, and in some cases I really </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">like
the original novel, but I don't want people to say "Oh, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">it's
another Kim Newman book." I want them all to be different,</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to do something different with each book.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'What I would like to do next is a hardback collection of my </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">short
fiction, of which there is a substantial amount now, and I </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">would
like another novel out at the same time as </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Jago </b>is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">published
in paperback. At the moment that is what I am </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">describing
as a Steampunk Vampire novel. Victorian set,</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">alternate
world novel with vampires in it. At the moment it's </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">provisionally
titled </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Anno Dracula</b> and a
novella, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Red Reign</b>, which </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">will
form the core of the book, will appear in Steve Jones' </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Mammoth Book of
Vampires</b>.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Until then, we wish Kim Newman and Jack Yeovil good luck with </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">their
respective books ... and may the best man win!</span></div>
Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-69566330064094156502020-04-14T11:18:00.003+01:002020-04-14T11:18:57.375+01:00GRAHAM MASTERTON<br />
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">If you look at the books which can be
can be considered as being foundation of modern horror, then you come up with
perhaps a handful of titles and authors. One of which has to be <b>The
Manitou</b> by Graham Masterton.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Graham Masterton is one of the greatest writers of
horror fiction alive today. His work epitomises the genre, with good,
interesting characters faced with horrific and plausable horrors all set in the
real world. <b>The Manitou</b> was Graham Masterton's first horror novel and
involved demonic possession in downtown New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'In the space of literally a week I wrote <b>The Manitou</b>,
which was based partly on an old legend I'd read in a <i>Buffalo
Bill </i>Annual of 1955 and partly on the fact that my wife was pregnant
with our first child. So that's where the idea of an Indian medicine man being
reborn in the modern day to take his revenge on the Paleface came from. The
book actually had two endings. In the original version, which was published in
hardback by Lindel and Spearman in America, the medicine man - Misquamacus -
was killed by Vietnam Rose - a particularly nasty form of venereal disease -
passed on to him by his 'mother'. When the American paperback came to be
published by Pinnacle, the editor asked if the ending could be changed and so I
changed it.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The Manitou</span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;"> established a loose theme for Masterton's work; that of
ancient evils revisited on the modern day. 'You find that so many of these old
myths and legends very succinctly sum up some very basic fears. I was up in
Glasgow doing a promotional tour a couple of years ago and I was talking to
some old ladies at Ibrox Park Library and they told me about some horrible
witches - the Glaistigs. These creatures always used to have a little companion
with them, called Little Plug. They'd visit your house at night, suck your cows
dry, and then kill your youngest born child and bathe their Little Plug in the
blood. When you actually look at what that myth is about, first of all there's
the very basic fear of losing your livelihood by them coming and draining your
cow; then there's a <b>Fatal Attraction</b> kind of fear where another woman
takes over the household and finally there's the fear of injury happening to
your child. A lot of these old legends personify people's fundamental fears. On
top of that you then have the fun of visiting them on the present day. It also
makes the book work on several levels. For instance in <b>Mirror</b> I was able
to use <b>Alice Through the Looking Glass</b> as a springboard, and in <b>Family
Portrait</b> it was <b>The Picture of Dorian Grey</b>. These literary reference
points give the books a kind of spurious authenticity which people enjoy.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Shortly after publication, <b>The Manitou</b> was made
into a film starring Tony Curtis and Susan Strasberg. 'Bill Girdler, the
exploitation movie maker, had picked the book up at an airport. He rang me up
and said 'We've written a screenplay of your book, do you mind if we buy it?'
So I said 'No, I don't mind.' They made the film virtually within six months.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I felt that the film was quite good of its type. It was
just at the time that <b>Star Wars</b> came out so it had a sort of <b>Star
Wars</b>-y type ending. I was pleased that the dry humour was retained and I
thought the casting wasn't bad. We were sketching out the plans for making <b>The
Djinn</b> into a movie when Bill was killed in a helicopter accident. That
really stopped any further film projects at that time.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">After completing <b>The Manitou</b>, Masterton carried
straight on writing. 'I just write all the time. Having been used to working on
magazines where I was writing continuously, I write continuously now. If I'm not
doing horror novels I'm working on something else. I'm still writing sex
instruction <b>How To...</b> books for Penguin USA. They apparently sell in
their millions. The incredible thing is that new generations of people are
still growing up more sexually ignorant than they ought to be and the problem
pages in newspapers and magazines are full. People still find it difficult to
communicate on sexual matters so if you can reassure them, you're doing
something worthwhile and, because of the sales, it's certainly profitable for a
writer.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Graham Masterton has always wanted diversity in his
work. 'I like writing about anything that interests me, I don't like to feel
confined. If you look at other writers who have been really prominent, they
always seem to write virtually the same book over and over again. In some ways
they are right to do it and I envy them that ability because a lot of readers
do want to be back in familiar territory with each successive book. I don't
knock them at all, they are obviously being very business-wise and very
sensible and have done very well, but if you're not happy doing that, you can't
do it.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">More recently, Masterton has returned to the success of
his debut horror novel with <b>Burial</b>, the third of his books to pit our
hero Harry Erskine against Misquamacus. '<b>Revenge of the Manitou</b> was the
second book, and I just liked the idea of looking back at the same characters
in a different setting and reworking them. <b>Burial</b> is set twenty years
later. Interestingly enough, there was a French edition of <b>Burial</b> and
the publisher pointed out that there were two people in the novel who were
killed in <b>The Manitou</b>: the girl who runs the occult shop, Amelia Crusoe,
and her boyfriend MacArthur. In <b>The Manitou</b> they were burned alive in
their apartment. Whoops! Of course it was twenty years since I'd written it and
in the film they don't die, so my memory of it was always that they hadn't
died. So I wrote a little introduction for the French edition explaining that
people who live in novels are different from the rest of us and I'd decided
that I still liked them so they could come alive again. In any case, if you
read <b>The Manitou</b> carefully, you find that their bodies were burnt beyond
recognition so the police could have made a mistake.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">One of the more refreshing aspects of Masterton's
writing is that his characters are always very well defined. 'I think a book is
useless without that and I think that's where a lot of horror books fall down.
They might have a very, very good idea as far as the plot goes but if the
characters don't live and you don't really care what happens to them or how
they deal with it, then the whole thing is pointless. I also think it's
important to realize the fundamental absurdity of these books and to try and
come to terms with that in your story. The reaction, for instance, for most
people if something really horrific and monstrous appeared at the window would
be to go 'oh shit!' and then burst out laughing.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I write very conversationally. When I'm writing, I'm in
the book. You can read an awful lot of books where it's obviously just
happening in front of the writer on the page or on the screen, whereas I'm
aware of the wind blowing on my back and the noises coming from over there and
the smell coming from the fire lit beyond the trees and so on. That's why a lot
of things happen in my books behind people or in the distance, there's a sort
of stereophonic or quadraphonic effect. Although it's absurd in principle to
postulate, the ideal book would be one where when you stop reading it, you're
still in it. To give that feeling of actually being there. There are a lot of
normal, day to day techniques that I use. If people are having a big,
expressive argument in a book I'll have the argument on my own, think about the
gestures they'd make and try to minimize the language. An awful lot of people's
feelings are put over in endless tracts of conversation and dialogue and I try
to keep these to a minimum because people don't normally speak like that. An
awful lot is done through gesture and the trick is to put that in a book
instead.' <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Recently published in the UK was <b>Night Plague</b>
(Warner p/b), the third book in a trilogy concerning a group of people who take
on the persona of the Night Warriors in their dreams and do battle against
evil. 'I liked the idea of something happening in your dreams, that idea that
you could be somebody else, somebody far beyond your normal capabilities. It
turned out to be more of a fantasy than I thought it would be when I first
started writing it. It was going to merely be just people living another, quite
ordinary, life in their dreams but it got a bit bombastic and out of control,
everybody started getting these wonderful uniforms and things like that. But I
enjoyed doing that. The second novel in the trilogy was <b>Death Dream</b>.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The next novel to be published is called <b>Flesh &
Blood</b> (Heinmann, h/b, July). 'This is a book which concerns the insertion
of human genes into a very large and malevolent pig. At the same time it's also
tied up with the ancient European legends of the mummers and Jack in the Green
and that sort of thing. It's a very long book and it starts off with three poor
little children having their heads cut off by their father. That's a fairly up
to date theme and there's a lot of moralizing about genetics. You don't realize
that in almost all the food we eat there are distorted animal genes, even
vegetables have been converted by genetics. If we are what we eat, what the
hell are we? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I've just finished a book called <b>Spirit</b>, which
is a horror ghost story, and I'm about to start another one and I'm also due to
write another sex book. On top of all that, there's two magazine columns
monthly for <i>Men Only</i>. I write the restaurant column for <i>Men Only</i>! Not many people know that.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif"; letter-spacing: -.15pt;">With several horror novels coming up, together with a
collection of short stories called <b>Fortnight of Fear</b> due from Severn
House shortly it seems that Graham Masterton is, for the moment at least,
concentrating on chilling our bones.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-65408360069322429292020-04-14T11:15:00.002+01:002020-04-14T11:15:51.157+01:00THE RETURN OF THE WAMPHYRI<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Brian Lumley is one of
the most prolific horror writers working </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
the field today. He has successfully updated the vampire myth </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">into
a terrifying series of books featuring the horrific and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">memorable
Wamphryi.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><br />
Brian started writing while he was stationed in Cyprus with the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Royal
Military Police: 'I was doing a lot of swimming and I </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">liked
to make notes about the different things I saw: octopus, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
various types of shells and so on. I sold a couple of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">articles
to <i>Diver </i>magazine and I liked the idea of putting </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">words
on paper for money. We then moved to Berlin where we were </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stationed
in the Olympic Stadium, the one where Jesse Owen almost </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">gave
Hitler a heart attack by winning all the events. In that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">place,
back in 1967, at 2 o'clock in the morning, when the last </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">drunk
had been locked up and the last would©be refugee had been </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">ripped
to pieces on the wire or shot coming over the Wall, there </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
nothing to do. So I was reading all these books which I got </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">at
the local YMCA. 70 percent of them were terrible, 20 per cent </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">were
moderate and 10 per cent were good, and a lot of the good </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stuff
was horror that appeared in books edited by August Derleth, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">published
by Arkham House out of Wisconsin, America. I wrote some </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stories
- I thought I could do at least as well as the bad stuff </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">-
and sent them to Derleth. He bought two of them straight away </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
suggested a revision for a third. Within a year he was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">suggesting
that I put together a collection in hardback, and a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">year
after that he was asking for a novel. So I was on my way.</span></div>
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<br />'The first novel, if I'm right, because I was writing two at </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
same time, was </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Beneath the Moors</b>,
which was an Arkham House </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">hardback,
very Lovecraftian, and also </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Burrowers
Beneath</b>, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">which
was released in paperback. That was about 1973, 1974.'</span></div>
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<br />
Brian didn't start writing full time until he left the army at </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
end of 1980 after twenty-two years service.</span></div>
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<br />'All of a sudden, the Lovecraft-influenced material had to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fly
out of the window because if I was going to make a living out </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
writing, it was going to have to be commercial. Not that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Lovecraft
isn't commercial but you can't make a big success out </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">of
a Cthulhu mythos story, it's all been done. So it had to be </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">something
new, different and hard-hitting. Modern horror is hard-hitting stuff, but I didn't want to lose the influence of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">people
I call the Masters: Ray Bradbury, August Derleth, H P </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Lovecraft,
Robert Bloch and Richard Matheson. On the other hand, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
did want to do it differently. Lovecraft, of course, was my </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">main
man because Arkham House was his publisher and that's what </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">attracted
me in the first place. Lovecraft did not write about </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
usual vampires, werewolves, zombies and monsters, his horror </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">stories
were different, the themes were different. So when I sat </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">down
to write the <i>Necroscope </i>books, I didn't want to have </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">vampires
that were the same as had been done before. I wanted </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">vampires
that did more than just suck.'</span></div>
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<br />
Brian's vampires, the Wamphyri, are a powerful and ancient race of creatures, which, unlike the popular film©inspired image of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
vampire reproduce through a detailed and intricate process. </span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'A human infected with vampirism can produce an egg and pass </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">it
on to another prospective vampire, to his egg 'son'; he can </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">also
pass on his vampirism through his blood or his semen, he can </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">have
sons which are vampires and given time they will become </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Wamphyri
and produce eggs of their own, but that's a long process </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
each of the Wamphyri only produces one egg. But if you kill </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
bury one of these vampire 'Lords' and he rots down, he's </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">liable
to put up toadstools which will release spores. If you </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">breathe
one of them in, bingo! It will develop into a vampire egg </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">which
will produce a Wamphyr leech and you become a vampire.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'This idea was hinted at through the early <i>Necroscope </i></span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">books.
The reader always suspected there was more to it than met </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
eye but I didn't let out the full explanation until </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Deadspeak</i>'</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
The eponymous Necroscope of the books is one Harry Keogh, a human </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with
several extraordinary abilities.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'Harry's power of speaking to the dead comes from the time </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
my father died. I remember standing by his coffin before he </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
buried, looking down at him and thinking: well I've spent two </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thirds
of my life in the army and I've very rarely been at home </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
I never really got the chance to sit down and talk to you. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It
seemed such a shame. I wished that I could stand there and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
he could hear me and we could cover one or two points we </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">never
got round to. I knew as I looked at him that he'd just love </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
have a pint right now. Later, in a pub, I sat and enjoyed a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">pint
and I tried to will the taste to him. I thought that if I'd </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">been
home all those years we could have enjoyed a few drinks </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">together
and maybe spun a few yarns between us, because my old </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">man
was very much like me.</span></div>
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<br />'This thought developed and I realised that it would be </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">something
to have a person who could actually talk to dead people </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">because
there's a hell of a lot of knowledge gone from the world </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
buried in the earth. If the minds of the dead did go on </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">living
then how would they communicate to us, or with each other, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
that is where the necroscope comes in. Harry Keogh is able </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
speak with the dead and, using their amassed knowledge </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">together
with his natural affinity for numbers, unravel the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">secrets
of space and time.'</span></div>
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<br />
There are five weighty books in the <i>Necroscope </i>series, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Necroscope</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Wamphyr</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Source</b>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Deadspeak </b>and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Deadspawn</b>. Harry </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
the common thread and as he progresses through the books, he </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">finds
more and more out about his own talents, leading to an </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">apocalyptic
finale. The series is selling well at the moment, but </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">this
was not always the case.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The first jacket on the first edition of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Necroscope </b>didn't </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">sell.
No one understood why, as the publishers knew the book was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">good.
So they pulled it in, got George Underwood to do a new </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">cover,
and they started selling ... and selling. Second printing, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">third,
fourth, fifth, sixth ... they're still flying off the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">bookshelves. It just goes to show that a good jacket may not sell </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">a
bad book but it damn well helps to sell a good one. I was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">recently
told that in the last six months, all five of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Necroscope </i>books have sold more copies than in their first </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">six
months!'</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
When Brian reached the end of the final <i>Necroscope</i> book, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Deadspawn</b>, he took
the fairly radical step of killing off his </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">hero.
This was met with howls of protest from the fans, but while </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Harry
Keogh may be dead, his sons live on in a new trilogy </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">collectively
titled <i>Vampire World</i>.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Source</b> I
introduced the reader to the world of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Wamphyri,
where they come from, called Sunside/Starside. There </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
a range of barrier mountains. On one side, in the forests, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">woods
and valleys, live human beings while on the other side, in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
dark - because the sun only rises on Sunside - live the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Wamphyri
in huge cavernous eyries of weather-carved stone jutting </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">from
the barren plains. The Wamphyri inhabit these stacks and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">when
the sun goes down on Sunside they fly across the mountains </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
take their prey. There is also a dimensional gate between </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">their
world and ours. The gate in our world opens in Romania </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">which
is why our vampire legends originate from there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'It dawned on me that I'd created a world but I hadn't </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">explored
it, and I wanted to. Before Harry Keogh died he fathered </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">two
sons on Sunside. One of them's a straight guy, he just wants </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
be a gypsy like his daddy (as far as he knows his father was </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">a
gypsy). His brother, on the other hand, longs for the power </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">which
comes from being Wamphyri. The story develops from there.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />'The first <i>Vampire World</i>, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Blood Brothers</b>, has just been </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">published
and I've just finished the second which is called </span><b><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The </span></b><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Last
Eyrie </b>and the third, which is next on my agenda, will be </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">called
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Blood Wars</b>. That
makes eight books on a similar theme but </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">there's
an eight year period between the end of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Source</b> and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
start of </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Deadspeak </b>during
which Harry Keogh is searching for </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">his
lost wife and son. I intend to fill that gap with two more </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">books
called </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Necroscope: The Lost
Years Volumes I and II</b>, which </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">makes
ten books in the series and that, I think, will satisfy me </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">for
the moment.'</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Necroscope</b> has also
been picked up by Malibu Comics in America </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
a five©part graphic novel. The first issue should be available </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
June 1992, and Malibu have the rights to the first three </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><i>Necroscope </i>books. There is also a series of resin figures </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">planned
from Classic Plastics in America, depicting scenes and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">characters
from the <i>Necroscope</i> series. With the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">aforementioned
three books already planned, Brian is not looking </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">much
further ahead, although he does not rule out a return to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Lovecraft's
Dreamlands with Hero and Eldin at some point in the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">future.
With over thirty books to his name already, Brian Lumley </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
still going strong.</span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-78839154423998015012020-04-14T11:00:00.001+01:002020-04-14T11:00:24.608+01:00THE FRIGHTENER<br />
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Stephen
Laws should not be a new name to <i>Starburst </i>readers </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">as
we have been covering his rise to prominence in the horror </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">genre
ever since his first novel was published back in 1985.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Now he sets </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Frighteners</b> on
us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>Following demonic trains </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"><b></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Ghost Train</b>), personalised
killing forces (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Spectre</b>) and a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">timeless
and ancient evil (</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Wyrm</b>), what are
we up against </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">this
time?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">What are the Frighteners?</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"The Frighteners are revealed in the new novel.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>It's about a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">small
time crook, Eddie Brinkburn, who does little jobs like car </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">licence
changes, petty theft, that sort of thing.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He is set up </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">by
a large criminal organisation when a petrol station robbery </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">goes
wrong and he ends up in prison.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">While
he's locked up, some </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">bad
things happen to him including the fact that his family are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">murdered
by the organised crime mob.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This gives
him a rage and a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">keen
desire for revenge.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">But also while he's
in prison, he comes </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">into
contact with something that gives him a supernatural power. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He
uses this power to gain an early parole and once he's back on </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
streets he sets about bringing down the whole criminal </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">underworld
in London.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The Frighteners are the
essence of that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">power.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">If you don't do what Eddie wants then he can
put the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Frighteners
on you; he can send these things around to your house </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
convince you to do what he wants you to do.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"Frighteners can be created from any raw material available, they </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">can
take a myriad of forms, but basically they're the worst thing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
the world that you would ever want to see and they're very, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">very
brutal.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">They'll go and they'll get
whatever Eddie wants and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">by
God you'd better do what he wants or ...</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"The novel is, at its most basic, a revenge thriller, but the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">plot
is a springboard for bigger things.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The
power that Eddie </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">inherits
has its own ambitions and ultimately the whole fabric of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reality
starts coming apart at the seams."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Ghost Train</b> begins with
the words 'It was another day in hell' </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
this would seem to sum up Steve's approach to the horror </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">genre
- put the hero through hell. "In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Ghost Train</b>, the fun fair </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">barker
says at one point 'You paid to come in, didn't you?</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">You </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">wanted
to be scared?'</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">So my characters often
face the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">consequences
of their dealing with the supernatural.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">That's one </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">aspect
of it.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Perhaps more importantly, I have
always been </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">interested
in dealing with people who face up to their worst </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fears
made real - and actually overcome them.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm being a little </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">optimistic
here, because the little, insignificant people </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">can sometimes call upon hidden reserves and face up to the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">threat
- they may get completely flattened by it, but I like to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">think
that they have won as well.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There is a
sense of elation </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">about
their defiant stance.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This is another
theme of my books in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
often the external threat is a distorted reflection of the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">inner
turmoil in the characters up against it.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">This is probably</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">most evident in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Wyrm</b>"</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Wyrm</b>, Steve set
out to create 'a new monster', something </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
would have its own history and weaknesses.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">"I was pleased </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with
the way that turned out.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I wanted a
completely new entity </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">with
its own <i>modus operandi</i> and the creature in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Wyrm</b> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">was
something I was able to play around with.
In </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Wyrm</b>, the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">hero
ultimately defeats the monster with words and the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">implication,
which is not fully stated, is that if he goes back </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">on
his word then bad things could start happening again.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"It was a reaction against accepted lore.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>We all know that </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">silver
bullets kill werewolves and that vampires abhor </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">crucifixes.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">These are well defined rules that writers go
to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">great
pains to break and bend, so I thought hell - the Wyrm is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">going
to be something new.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The human
characters are going to be </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">well
acquainted with the standard supernatural cliches which </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">won't
work.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">They will be faced with having to
confront the Wyrm </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
find out what the rules that govern it are."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
Hailing from Newcastle, it is understandable that Steve would set </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">his
novels in and around that industrial town - </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Ghost Train</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">concerns
the railway connection between London and Newcastle, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Spectre </b>is set in the
Byker district of the town and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Wyrm</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">takes
place in a fictional northern village called Shillingham. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Steve
has coined a new term for his style of writing: Industrial</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">Gothic.<br />
<br />
"It's all about back alleys and streetlights and deserted </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">factories
rather than castles and cobwebs and things that go bump </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">in
the night. It's a new kind of
gothic. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Frighteners</b> is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">industrial
gothic as well, although I moved all the action down </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
London seeing as it's the crime mecca of the country.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Let's </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">face
it, it's where the roots of organised criminal activity </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">are. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"I'm also looking at Good and Evil (with a capital G and a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">capital
E) in a different way.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">In the past my
books have tended </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
take a view that evil is an external force.
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>The Frighteners</b> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">says
that Evil is indigenous to Man, it's generated within, it's </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">not
an entity that comes from beyond, it's something that's in </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">all
of us.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"><b></b></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>The Frighteners</b> is,
so far, the book that I'm happiest with, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
I feel most strongly about.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It's taken
me longer to write </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
I think it's probably the most powerful and uncompromising </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">thing
I've written.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It's basically a
'head-on-collision' novel. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Some
people have been upset by this head-on aspect but that's the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">way
the book is and I make no apologies for it."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
As well as the novels, Steve has also turned his hand to short </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">fiction. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";">'</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Guilty
Party' - a werewolf story - appeared in issue </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">number
2 of <i>Fear </i>and </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";">'</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Junk' - a tale of terror set in a </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Junkyard - appeared in </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Scare Care</b>, Graham
Masterton's anthology </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">for
children's charities published in 1989.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">(This collection has </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">yet
to be published in Britain but the US hardback edition was</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">published by Tor and can be found in some specialist bookshops). </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
asked Steve why he hadn't had more short fiction published. </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">"Because
I haven't written it!</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I just don't have
time as what </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">little
I have is taken up with writing the novels.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I have only </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">written
short fiction when someone has asked me specifically. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Graham
asked me for </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Scare Care</b> and I was
pleased to hear recently </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">that
</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";">'</span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Junk' is on a short
list for a best horror collection of </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">1989.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I have a day job as well, and working part
time it takes</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">me
about a year to complete each novel.<br />
<br />
"I like to know exactly what I'm doing when I'm writing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>There </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">has
to be a strong sense of logic.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I develop
that when I outline </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
book and consequently that takes a long time.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">
</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The outline </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">is
written in the present tense and basically describes what </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">happens.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">The completed outline is perhaps a quarter of
the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">length
of the finished novel, and the transition from outline to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">final
novel is a case of putting all the meat and description </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">onto
the bones. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"My next novel, </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Darkfall</b>, which I am
writing at the moment, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">involves
the police and I've been researching it with the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Northumbria
constabulary for the last year or so.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I
want to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">present
the police professionals with an overtly supernatural </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">situation
and see how they would react.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It's
working well and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm
pleased with it so far.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">It should be
ready for the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">publishers
in about three months time and after that I have plans </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">to
start on a novel which will be looking at vampires in a new </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">light.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I can't tell you any more than that, but it
will be </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">completely
different from anything about vampires that you've</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">seen
before. <br />
<br />
"I think that when you write in the horror genre, there is a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">danger
of going down a dead end.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">There are some
people who are </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">experimenting
in the field but I don't think that there is enough </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">pioneering
going on.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I'm particularly interesting
in cross-fertilisation which is about taking standard themes and doing </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">something
different with them.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">A writer like Steve
Gallagher is </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">a
prime example.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">He can take a police
procedural novel and, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">using
its rules and its readership, write it from a supernatural </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">point
of view.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">I believe that
cross-fertilisation is going to </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">inject
a new breath of life into the genre and that writers and </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">readers
should embrace the concept and simply enjoy the results. </span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"Some other good examples are Thomas Harris' </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New"; mso-ascii-font-family: "Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-font-family: "Times New Roman";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";"><b>Silence of the Lambs</b> </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">and
Peter Straub's </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko</b>. </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Koko </b>is a brilliant non-horror, horror </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">novel. Is </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Courier New";"></span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"><b>Silence
of the Lambs</b> a horror novel or not? It
won </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">the
1989 Bram Stoker award from the Horror Writers of America, </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">but
I argue that it's not actually a horror novel in the accepted </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">sense.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">Some people in the genre have been offended
that it won a </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">major
horror award, but I think they should welcome it as it will </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">only
serve to refresh the horror genre.</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
"At the end of the day the writer's job is to entertain the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">reader.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">You have to make them feel as though they've
been </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">through
something, that it counts for something - that's </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">certainly
what I want when I read a book.</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">"I have a basic creed:</span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">'People like
to be frightened because </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">they
don't like to be frightened' and as long as that is the </span><span style="font-family: "Times New Roman", serif;">case,
I'll be writing to frighten them."</span></div>
<div class="MsoPlainText">
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "Times New Roman","serif";">
<br />
</span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-86373498399393096402020-04-14T10:49:00.000+01:002020-04-14T10:49:05.422+01:00GRAHAM JOYCE<br />
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">In 1991 a paperback called <b>Dreamside </b>was published
by Pan Books. It received plaudits from all who read it, and the author, Graham
Joyce, has cemented that success with two further novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Graham's
fiction is real-life, dealing with believable characters in everyday situations
and it is his skill at handling the interplay, as well as the underlying
themes, that make the books so enjoyable.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Before
writing <b>Dreamside</b>, Graham worked as a trainer of youth workers for a
national youth organisation. "I'd been doing that for about eight years
and I started to hear myself running on autopilot," he explained.
"I'd been writing semi-seriously since I was about eighteen. Whichever job
I was in at the time determined whether I had the stamina to write anything in
the evenings. If you have a creative and demanding job it's difficult to do the
things you enjoy in your free time. Part of the problem was that it was a damn
good job and I enjoyed it so it was taking all of my energy.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"So,
having realised I was going nowhere, I suddenly asked my wife, Sue, if she
fancied going to Greece for a year. She agreed and we planned to go in to work
the next day, pick arguments with our bosses and hand our notices in. It was
like when you agree with someone to jump in a swimming pool together and you're
worried that the other person's not going to jump when you do. As it happened
we both jumped. It was drastic, but it was a drastic time for us.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"So
off we went. We rented out our house in England and ended up on the Greek
island of Lesbos where we had a wonderful year. We found a very cheap place to
rent on the beach. It had no electricity and no running water, we had to get
the water from a pump."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Anyone
who has read Joyce's most recent novel, <b>The House of Lost Dreams</b> will
instantly recognise this location from the book. I wondered how much of the
book was real.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"The
setting is real; that house, everything around that place and the geography of
that island is real, it's only the events that are fictional. Lesbos is a
strange, volcanic island and we did have certain peculiar feelings around the
house we were living in and we actually experienced this business of saying
something and it coming true, it happened too often to be able to discard it
with the word coincidence. I tend to be a sceptic but how many times can you
use the word coincidence in one day before you start to realise that the word
is inadequate to describe the kind of experience you're having? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"For
example, the passage in the book about finding scorpions on the wall actually
happened. Sue and I hadn't even discussed scorpions but I suddenly woke up in
the middle of the night and by doing that I woke Sue up. She asked me what was
wrong and I said 'There are scorpions in the room'. She said, 'That's funny,
I've just been dreaming about scorpions'. So I said 'Okay, I'm going to have a
look'. I didn't like the idea of them getting into bed with us, you see. So I
lit an oil lamp and went around the room. Sure enough, right above the bedstead
were these three very large scorpions on the wall. I don't know what it was,
but there must have been something, maybe it's a sense of smell or danger, some
sense of alarm, that woke me up and made Sue dream. As it happened - I'm
ashamed to say - as in the book, I had to kill the bloody things with the back
of a frying pan. It was a very odd experience.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"We
were out on Lesbos for a year; the best year of my life, without doubt. We
drove there, lived there, learnt the language, it was terrific. And I also
wrote <b>Dreamside</b> there.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I'd
gone there intending to write and I'd had this idea banging around in my mind
for ages. I'd drafted a synopsis before we left and sent it to an agent. So
when we arrived I got my head down and did the work. We supplemented our
savings by picking oranges and olives and that sort of stuff, and by the time
the year was up we were pretty much skint. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It
was about then that I got the phone call. There was only one phone in the
nearby village, and that was in the <i>Kafenion </i>where the
shepherds and locals drink, a little spidery coffee bar. A shepherd came
running up the pathway, and to see a Greek running anywhere is always
impressive, so we knew something was up, and he was shouting: '<i>Elate
kai na pame sto Kafenion</i>' that's 'Come, we must go to the <i>Kafenion</i>'. 'There's a madman on the phone' he says. When I
got there, there were all these Greek shepherds clustered round the phone and
they were taking turns to grab the handset and go 'Eh?' into the mouthpiece
before passing it on for someone else to have a go. So I grabbed the phone off
them and said 'Hello, can I help you?' And this voice said, 'I'm trying to get
through to Graham Joyce but it's been a nightmare'. 'It's just the guys from
the <i>Kafenion</i>,' I explained, and he asked, 'What sort of
people are they?' 'Well they're Greeks,' I said, and he goes, 'Oh dear!' It
turned out that they'd been shouting at him for about two days while he'd been
trying to get through to me, this was my agent, and he had sold <b>Dreamside</b>
to Kathy Gale at Pan books.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"It
was a fairy tale ending; if it hadn't have happened, we would have had a great
year. But this news really made it all worthwhile. It's how it happens in the
movies, you give up your job, go down to Greece, write a book, get it
published. Of course, it doesn't normally happen like that.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Then
two years went by before <b>Dreamside</b> was actually published. I thought I'd
be able to buy Christmas presents for everyone that year. Wrong. I had to wait
two years. Then my editor at Pan left the company and everything was up in the
air. Nobody seemed to know who I was at Pan and there was this vagueness about
the next book and so my agent started to look for another publisher. I had my
next novel, <b>Dark Sister</b>, ready and so I ended up at Headline."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<b><span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Dreamside</span></b><span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;"> concerns lucid dreaming and the experiments of a
group of college students in that area. Where did the idea for this novel come
from?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"Lucid
dreaming was a subject that I discovered because there was some genuine
research into the subject at Hull University in the seventies. There was money
available for that kind of research and people would be paid for lying on their
backs in darkened tanks of water! So I read up on that and I also remembered a
TV programme in which a woman described some side effects that she had
experienced as a lucid dreamer. One was that she would wake up and go about her
daily business, then she would wake up again, then she would go about her daily
business, then she would wake up again! Each time she was breaking out of a
shell only to find that she was still dreaming. I thought that this was
terrifying, a real nightmare, not knowing if you were dreaming or not. As well
as the multiple layers, the other thing about lucid dreams was that they are so
banal, totally unlike the weirdness of normal dreams, there was nothing in the
dream to signal that it was a dream. An image came to me of this man lying in
bed on his own and waking up repeatedly. Then the phone rings and somebody else
tells him that they've had the same experience and he still doesn't know if he
is dreaming or not. The book came from that idea.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"<b>Dreamside</b>
seemed to arouse a lot of interest because it certainly wasn't mainstream
science fiction, it wasn't mainstream fantasy, it wasn't exactly a horror novel
and I think that's probably why people were interested in it. If you're on the
edge people are often more interested than if you're writing straight down the
track. As has happened, the two books that have followed are not straight down
the track of fantasy and horror, they use clear genre devices but they are
floating around the genre areas. That doesn't bother me but I think it bothers
the publishers. One consequence appears to be that <b>Dark Sister</b> was put
with the horror titles while <b>Dreamside</b> was with the fantasy in the
bookshops.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"<b>Dark
Sister</b> is about herbalism, New Age concepts, finding yourself and
witchcraft. I'm interested in anything about latent powers. In <b>Dreamside</b>
the latent powers concerned lucid dreaming, in <b>Dark Sister</b> I looked at
feminine powers that past generations associated with witchcraft. <b>House of
Lost Dreams</b> was about people projecting forms of fantastic reality onto the
landscape. If there's a pattern to my work, it's people finding what's inside
themselves, lifting the lid, finding out what's bubbling away beneath."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Another
recurring theme is the break-up of couples through a reluctance to communicate
with each other.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"That's
true, I hadn't thought of that. That's interesting, but I've been with my wife
for about fourteen years. That's odd, isn't it?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">"I
think a lot of fantasy and science fiction fails to concentrate on character
and the relationships between people. I focus as much on what is happening to
the people as on what is happening around them. If I were to write a ghost
story then I would look as much at the people who are seeing the ghost as at
the ghost itself."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Graham
is currently at work on his fourth novel, about which he will say nothing other
than it seems to be as different from his previous work as each of those has
been different from the others. It takes him about a year to complete each
book. "That's not first draft, but it'll take about a year to get a book
ready for publication. That seems to be the natural pace for me."<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-67548268631745769412020-04-14T10:46:00.000+01:002020-04-14T10:46:20.581+01:00HEART-SHAPED BOX: JOE HILL INTERVIEWED<br />
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<b>David J Howe meets up with debut horror novelist Joe
Hill.<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Meeting Joe Hill, you cannot help but be reminded of another
author in his younger days … photographs from the seventies reveal Stephen King
to be of similar build with similar eyes … and indeed, Joe Hill was born Joseph
Hillstrom King, son of Stephen. However this fact only really came out in the
last year, after his first collection of short stories, <i>20<sup>th</sup>
Century Ghosts</i>, was published. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
We meet in a London coffee bar, where Joe has a cappuccino
and slice of cake. Coming from a literary family, with both mother and father
being published authors, Joe has been writing ever since he can remember.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I’ve been writing since I was 12,’ he explains, adding
sugar to his coffee. ‘My first professional submission was to Marvel Comics and
they turned it down . Tragically. I don’t know why …’ He smiles broadly. ‘But
then I finished a book in my senior year in college and that’s what won me my
agent. That was loosely based on, or took it’s inspiration from a Nirvana song.
The book was called <i>Paper Angels</i> and it was very Cormac McCarthy … and
used all these long words with 48 letters in and so on.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>I liked to work in words like “antediluvian”
if I could – any sentence could be improved by that.’</div>
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<br /></div>
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Joe pauses to munch on his cake, and I ask how growing up in
a house filled with books and writers at work affected him. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I dunno, I can’t compare it to anyone else’s childhood but
I do think it’s fair to say that I would come home from school and my mum would
be in her office, writing, my dad would be in his office, writing, and by the
time I was 12 or 13 I thought that making stuff up for a living was a totally
rational thing to do. I would get home from school and think, Oh, it must be
time for me to go write. I had the daily practice of writing, and now it’s been
such a part of my life for so long that not to write would be like … losing a
few fingers or something.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Talking with Joe, you realise that although he takes writing
very seriously, he doesn’t take himself too seriously. He is enthusiastic and
articulate, talking about his writing with interest and animation, hands
gesticulating.</div>
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<br /></div>
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I ask about his first published book, a collection of short
stories: ‘I wrote four novels before <i>Heart-Shaped Box </i>that I couldn’t
sell,’ he explains. ‘My first book was called <i>20<sup>th</sup> Century Ghosts</i>
and it sold to the last place it was sent: it had been turned down everywhere
else. But Peter Crowther from the small press publisher PS in the UK saw it,
liked it, and then published it.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Joe is a great supporter of and believer in the small
presses, and his passion is apparent. ‘The small presses are such an important
part of the literary ecosystem. It’s a place where anyone can come forward.
There have been so many writers who have had that chance to explore and
experiment and invent in the small presses when the larger publishing houses
would rather have something a little more safe. They’re not looking for
“generic” … but it’s a tough business and it’s hard to make any money in it and
so they’re looking for the titles where they think they can sell a few thousand
copies.</div>
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<br /></div>
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<i>Heart-Shaped Box</i> is certainly set to sell that.
Published in the UK at the end of March, it’s about a rock musician called
Jude, who buys a ghost on the internet and comes to regret that purchase when
it transpires that the sale was fixed, and that the ghost is out for revenge.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This collision between the fantastic – ghosts – and the
technological – the internet – is fascinating, however Joe doesn’t see it like
that. ‘It’s not really that fantastic, you know. First of all, all ghost
stories are really about people buying stuff.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>The family buys the house in Amityville. They get the six bedroomed
place, and then they get the blood leaking through the walls at 2am … When I
think about most stories of hauntings, they begin with people buying something
they shouldn’t. From another standpoint it should be noted that buying a ghost
off the internet is not a totally original idea. It’s been done! People have
sold their souls online. It’s all out there. People have sold haunted hat racks
and haunted bracelets … The one that sticks in my head is something that my mum
sent me … there was one woman on eBay selling a bracelet which the seller claimed
was possessed by the ghost of an angry witch. I remember thinking, who the
hell’s going to buy that?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>My question on
all this sort of stuff is not who would sell it, but who would buy it?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>And my answer to that was Jude.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘But I think that the concept is incidental. For me as a
writer I need a great concept to get started, that will carry me along for
about two days and then I need a great character or the story is headed for the
shredder. And, again, I found Jude. Jude is a really decent guy, he’s just been
having a bad day … and he’s been having that bad day for about six years.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I wonder how Joe classifies his own work. ‘<i>Heart-Shaped
Box</i> is horror,’ he says. ‘I always used to get annoyed when I was younger …
I’d get <i>Fangoria</i> magazine and open it and there’d be this interview with
a guy who had directed <i>Sorority Dwarf Massacre 4</i> or whatever, and he’d
be like, “I don’t really see myself as a horror director,” and I’d just want to
scream! You’re not Fellini! Look at the movie you just made! But that said, I
see myself as a guy who’s written one horror novel and some ghost stories, but
not necessarily a horror writer. I love fantasy and I love surrealism.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span><i>20<sup>th</sup> Century Ghosts</i> is a
good representation of my work. There’s some literary fiction in there, there’s
a crime story … I like genre fiction, but I like all the genres, from science
fiction to horror to crime …’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With <i>Heart-Shaped Box</i> picked up both by Gollancz in
the UK and Morrow in the US, it was only a matter of time before interest was
shown by Hollywood, and now a film version is underway, with Neil Jordan slated
to direct. Jordan’s previous work includes the halluciagenically beautiful
werewolf tale <i>The Company of Wolves</i> (1984), the controversial <i>The
Crying Game</i> (1992) and an adaptation of Anne Rice’s vampire novel <i>Interview
with A Vampire</i>. Production on the film will start for Warner Bros as soon
as Jordan finishes writing the script. Joe is understandably pleased with this
latest development. ‘I’m delighted Neil Jordan is going to take a whack at the
book. He’s a careful, literate director with a great aptitude for examining
fear and regret and love, and he should do a great job with it.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With <i>Heart-Shaped Box </i>already selling strongly – it
hit number 8 in the <i>New York Times</i> bestseller lists at the start of
April – what’s next for Joe Hill? ‘I don’t know,’ he says with a smile. ‘Some
of that depends on my publishers.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
next thing is a new edition of<i> 20<sup>th</sup> Century Ghosts</i>. Gollancz
in England and William Morrow in the US are doing it. There was one story
missed out, called ‘Bobby Conroy Comes Back From The Dead’, and so that will be
included.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I’ve also written a young adult fantasy novel called <i>The
Bright Circle</i> and I’ve also got a thriller underway – not supernatural –
called <i>Dirty Deeds</i> … so there’s a bunch of projects that could come
next.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Heart-Shaped Box<i> is published in the UK by Gollancz in
hardback.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-47255941533825080232020-04-14T10:43:00.001+01:002020-04-14T10:43:17.070+01:00CHRISTOPHER FOWLER<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Christopher Fowler's highly acclaimed first novel, <b>Roofworld </b>hit the shelves in 1988 and since then he has gone
to produce more unique and distinctive novels.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Chris's
first books were not in the horror genre at all. 'I always wanted to be a
writer,' he explained, 'and when I left school I annoyed my parents by not
going to university to study English Literature and instead went into an
advertising agency as a copywriter. I discovered that I hated advertising but
loved working on films. Eventually I set up a film marketing company with a
producer and we now have branches all over the world, twenty staff here, twenty
staff in LA. Currently, our campaigns are behind five out of the top ten
movies. Anyway, when we decided to open an LA office I went over there to head
it up.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'There's
something very lethargic about LA. Somebody once said that you go there when
you're nineteen, you fall asleep in front of the pool, and you wake up when
you're sixty-five. I didn't want that to happen to me, so I started writing. I
was determined to write something that would be a surefire commercial hit, so I
wrote a really stupid book called <b>How to Impersonate Famous People</b>. I
got on all sorts of TV programmes and it was very successful both here and in
the States. Following that I did another one called <b>The Ultimate Party Book</b>
which was even sillier. By that time I had started to write short stories and I
put together ten or so of them which became <b>City Jitters</b>. That was
published by Sphere just after Clive Barker had had a major success with his <b>The
Books of Blood</b> and the publisher was therefore keen on short stories.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'My
stories were horror because I've always been a huge horror fan. I was
influenced by <b>Famous Monsters of Filmland</b> as was everybody else; comics,
massively comics; I think we all go through the same learning curve. Then I
think probably Ira Levin, <b>A Kiss Before Dying</b> and <b>Rosemary's Baby</b>,
and then, bless him, John Burke did all those lovely Pan adaptations of the old
Hammer films. Meanwhile I was making the Aurora model kits - the Guillotine was
my favourite - and just trying to see as many horror films as possible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'The
first story I wrote was <b>Left Hand Drive</b> which was about a guy who
becomes trapped in a car park. I found the short story genre very comfortable
to write in but it never occurred to me to try and get any of the stories
published. Then, one day while I was working with the actor George Baker, he
told me that he was giving up acting for a time to write. I asked if he had an
agent and he introduced me and she is still my agent now. So armed with an
agent who knew the people at Sphere, <b>City Jitters</b> was published. They
then said that I should write a novel. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'At
that time, my offices had moved to Greek Street, where we were getting burgled
by people who were coming in across the roofs and that is really where the <b>Roofworld</b>
idea came from. I really just wanted to see if I could do it and then made my
life more complicated than I needed to by coming up with a multi-character,
multi-level action idea.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">The
strongest aspect of <b>Roofworld</b> is that the idea of rooftop gangs
traversing London via thin cables strung between the buildings, could all be
true. and Chris agrees. 'I think if you take a basic idea like that and work
out all the possibilities involved and make it realistic, that's what you get.
Ultimately we actually proved it when we shot the cinema commercial for <b>Roofworld</b>.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">To
do a cinema commercial for a book was completely unheard of at the time, but
Chris managed to get one agreed. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I
talked them into it, I couldn't believe I'd blagged them into doing it, I was
astounded when they agreed. At the time we were doing <b>The Making of Batman</b>,
so I got to know the <b>Batman</b> stunt double and he said he'd do it - he
also said he'd do the movie! -so we made it on the cheap. We shot the commercial
in the middle of the worst thunderstorm I have ever seen. We had a steel
conning tower erected on a roof in Charing Cross Road opposite the Shaftesbury
Theatre, and we had a man hanging from a steel cable in an electric storm at
midnight. But he did it, he actually went across the road on a wire, building
to building. One thing that shocked me was that he built up a much faster speed
than I had imagined in the novel. He had to have four people to stop him at the
other end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Another
problem was that I couldn't gain access to any of the tall buildings that I
needed to get into until after the book was published. When the <I>Sunday
Times<D> did a piece on the book, I had one of their journalists with me
and I finally got access to everywhere I wanted!'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Following
the success of <b>Roofworld</b>, Chris next novels, <b>Rune</b> and <b>Red
Bride</b> inhabited the same universe and featured some of the same characters.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'The
books, together with the latest, <b>Darkest Day</b>, form a sort of quartet. <b>Red
Bride</b> suddenly switches halfway through to feature Detective Hargreave from
<b>Roofworld</b> and characters in <b>Darkest Day</b> are shared with <b>Rune</b>.
Although the books all stand independently, I like to reward loyal readership
as it were, and in my next collection of short stories there'll be a Hargreave
story and there might also be a Bryant and May story as there was in <b>Bureau
of Lost Souls</b>.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Bryant
and May are two of Chris's most endearing and memorable characters. They are
two ageing London police detectives who have a somewhat unusual method of
working. They have differing viewpoints and occasionally get on each other's
nerves, but, as they are fond of punning, are the perfect match. They appear
together in Chris's latest novel, <b>Darkest Day</b>, which combines a
modern-day murder hunt with a Victorian secret society and mysterious Indian
resurrectionists.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I
wanted to do one more massively complex, charge around London, novel. I also
had this single, monumentally important, event that I wanted to hinge it around
- you'll have to read the book to discover what it is!'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">One
of the interesting aspects of the novel concerns the operation and inner
workings of London's craftsmen's Guilds - exclusive 'Masonic'-like institutions
which exist for the sole benefit of their members.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'A
phenomenal amount of research went into it, of which I used a minuscule amount.
I think there is a great danger of becoming a research bore, so I deliberately
pared it right back.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Alison
Hatfield, one of the characters, really is the curator of the Goldsmith's Guild
and she really did show me the inner sanctum of the Guild and how I describe it
is exactly what it looks like. She took me round there one night and showed me
all the secret places that the public are normally never allowed to see. There
is a real third-century stone throne to Diana in the middle of this London
building which the public is not allowed in to see, which I find heartbreaking.
I was very lucky to gain access to that sort of stuff in advance.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'There's
also a wonderful book called <b>The Worm in the Bud</b> about Victorian
sexuality which contains a massive amount of description about the Victorian
period. I would have liked to have included more detail about the Black Hole of
Calcutta and the Indian revivifiers but that would have resulted in, firstly a
much longer book, and secondly a danger that <b>Darkest Day</b> might have been
branded as a voodoo book and I didn't want that.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">As
well as the novels, Chris has continued to write short stories. His most recent
collection is <b>Sharper Knives</b>.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'I'm
more pleased with <b>Sharper Knives</b> than any of the other books of short
stories I've done because I wanted to try a lot of different formats in one
book resulting in a vast range of material. I've now done my Dracula story (<b>The
Legend Of Dracula Reconsidered As A Prime Time TV Special</b>), I've done my
chinese-style ghost story (<b>Chang-Siu And The Blade Of Grass</b>), I've done
my living dead story (<b>The Vintage Car Table-Mat Collection Of The Living
Dead</b>): in fact I've just written another for Steve Jones' forthcoming
zombie collection called <b>Night After Night of the Living Dead</b>. The
reaction to <b>Sharper Knives</b> has been fabulous so I'm definitely planning
another volume along similar lines.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Chris's
novels and short stories are very 'filmic' in their style and content, and
there is a lot of interest in them.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'<b>Roofworld</b>
has been sold to Landmark Entertainment and they are developing it as a project
at the moment. <b>Rune</b> belongs to Paul Hogan, who has an eighteen month
renewable option. <b>Red Bride</b> hasn't come out in paperback yet and you
never get the option offers until it does.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'<b>Left
Hand Drive</b> has just been filmed from my own screenplay. It's a short film,
made hopefully to go out with a main feature. We finished shooting it last
Christmas in Leicester Square in a car park. We blew up a BMW which was fun! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Another
short story from <b>Bureau of Lost Souls</b>, <b>The Master Builder</b>, has
just aired on CBS starring Tippi Hedren. I thought it was really good and that
they'd done it really well.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">'Currently
I'm working on a screenplay called <b>High Tension</b> which is a nasty little
story set in London's Docklands, in the top of the Canary Wharf building. It's
loosely based on a story in <b>Bureau of Lost Souls</b> called <b>Hot Air</b>,
where there's a dead body stuck in an air vent. Everyone's got Sick Building
Syndrome because of germs from it, and this girl ends up getting stuck in the
vent too; anyway, I've expanded the story to include a lot of other things.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 12.0pt; mso-hyphenate: none; text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph;">
<span style="letter-spacing: -.15pt;">Chris's
next novel is also underway. 'It's called <b>Spanky</b> and it's really really
different. It's set in California and concerns a young man who works in his
father's furniture store. At the local disco he meets a very charming, very
urbane Englishman dressed in twenties clothes who announces himself as a
Spancephelous Lachrymosa or Spanky for short. He insists that he is a minor
demon, an occult figure, and that he can give him anything he wants. He sets
about showing him how to be urbane, get women, be street-smart, and generally
changes his life. Then he demands payment. It's sexier, tougher and darker than
my previous novels.'<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-7359653482414782852020-04-14T10:40:00.000+01:002020-04-14T10:40:08.461+01:00CHARTING NEW FRONTIERS<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">David Howe talks to
co-author John Clute about the forthcoming <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Encyclopedia
of Fantasy</i>.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In 1993 a book was published which was, in many ways, one of
the most important books on the science fiction genre ever to see print. This
was the second – and much revised – edition of John Clute’s and Peter Nicholls’
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction</i>.
The book, costing £45 in a hardback edition of 1370 pages and over 4300
entries, became an instant essential purchase for all fans and historians of
science fiction, and went on to win just about every major genre award for that
year.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Now John Clute is back, this time collaborating with John
Grant – an author whose latest book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Strider’s
Galaxy</i>, written as Paul Barnett, was published by Legend in March – on a
companion volume entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Encyclopedia of Fantasy</i>. Once again published by Little Brown, the book
contains around the same number of words (1,100,000) and entries as the
previous volume, and attempts to chronicle the Fantasy genre with the same
degree of enthusiasm and illumination.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
John Clute is a tall, genial, Canadian with a grasp of the
English language that others can only wonder at. His regular book reviews for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interzone</i> often had even the most
eloquent of readers reaching for their dictionaries as Clute brought more
unusual words into play in his discussion and dissection of the genre.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘I think Peter Nicholls always wanted to do a Fantasy/Horror
encyclopedia that would complement <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Encyclopedia Of Science Fiction</i>, which he began conceiving around 1975,’
explains Clute when asked about the origins of this new project. ‘In the mid
1980s, Peter (and I) proposed a fantasy encyclopedia, based pretty strictly on
the lines and proportions of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction</i>; at the same time, Maxim Jakubowski [an
editor and writer] developed a quite similar project. The actual <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Encyclopedia of Fantasy</i> was proposed to
Colin Murray, the editor at Little Brown, in September 1992, on principles
substantially different from those which ended up governing the previous entry
structure. Although it looked superficially the same as the Science Fiction
book – being divided into alphabetical entries on authors, magazines, films,
TV, individual countries, and so forth – it was radically different underneath.
Instead of one hundred or so theme entries, we promulgated a list of around one
thousand theme/motif entries. They tended to be considerably less abstract than
those which thematised science fiction; and the one thousand motifs, which grew
to over two thousand tentative motifs, names and themes before being savagely
trimmed when we actually began to write the book, ended up, on the whole,
working as terms for describable elements of ‘Story’, rather than parcels of
‘Thought’. This distinction was not made to downgrade the previous entry
structure, but to adapt it to the very different, and – in encyclopedia terms –
unmapped regions of fantasy. The writing itself did not begin in earnest until
well into 1994; there was too much to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">think</i>
about before plunging into words. The original guess that we’d be able to do
the book in 500,000 words proved modest. By the time the last words of the
Introduction had been written, in September 1996, we’d gone to over 1,100,000
words.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The publishers and John Grant and I agreed to ideal limits
to the inexorable growth of the text on various occasions. Each time the limits
were higher. We started at about 500,000 words, and ended, willy-nilly, at
1,100,000, from which total a lot of text had actually been cut. If we’d had
another six months – and if Little Brown had had the paper mills ready to pour
out free paper – we could have gone to 1,500,000 easy.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One of the entries in the book is for ‘Fantasy’ itself, and
in this, a definition of a fantasy story is offered: ‘A fantasy text is a
self-coherent narrative. When set in this world, it tells a story which is
impossible in the world as we perceive it; when set in an otherworld, that
otherworld will be impossible, though stories set there may be possible in its
terms.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The entry goes on to define the terms used, for example: a
‘text’ is any format in which a fantasy story can be told: the written word,
comics and graphic novels, illustration and fantasy art, cinema and television
and music (notably opera and song). This gives some idea as to the scope of the
project.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
According to Clute, this definition was arrived at
pragmatically. ‘We eliminated great regions of the Fantastic from our primary
run of entries, ending with a core definition of Fantasy, for the purposes of
the book, which centres on High Fantasy (a term I don’t much like) and shallows
out gradually through Sword and Sorcery, Contemporary/Urban Fantasy, and
Supernatural Fiction, with Horror at the edge, or Water Margin: a term given to
two entries in the book, one for the television show, and one to describe the
infinitely regressive peripheries that surround central empires (like fantasy).</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Peter Nicholls characterised the central “move” of science
fiction as that outward, extrovert passage into the new that he called
Conceptual Breakthrough. The central move of Fantasy, on the other hand, could
be described as an inward, retroactive passage we called Recognition, borrowing
the term from</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Aristotle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Poetics</i>,
and using it <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">very</i> freely indeed.
Genres in this century may be deemed counter-myths: if the counter-myth of
science fiction is that – despite the contaminating evidence of history – the
dream of the 20th century can be made to work, then the counter-myth of fantasy
is that the 20th century is simply <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">wrong</i>.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
With any work of this scale, problems were bound to be
faced. I wondered what the biggest problem for Clute was: ‘The biggest single
problem for me – the biggest single problem John Grant had was getting me to
finish writing my copy – was that of attempting to construct a pragmatic matrix
or “raft” of entries by virtue of which it would be possible to write compact,
cross-reference-full entries on individual topics (like authors), <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">while at the same time </i>writing those
individual entries. It was a balancing act. I think we got safely to shore,
though.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Another difficulty was attempting to co-ordinate the
languages of the various relevant scholarships as the fields of the Fantastic
are variously well-plumbed, as individual fields, but by writers with very
different voices.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When discussing the impending publication of this new work,
Clute is anticipating the reaction of critics with some resignation. ‘I think
that some of the comments are inevitable, i.e. those which make it clear that
we can’t get away with it twice. But I (at least) console myself with a couple
of considerations: 1) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction</i> was a second edition (the first appeared in 1979, the
second, completely rewritten and twice as long, in 1993), which means it was a
fully matured book whose predecessor had been tested and shaken down by over a
decade’s use; 2) <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction</i> was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inherently</i>
easier to conceive: because science fiction can be understood as a field with
boundaries, but fantasy is a fuzzy set of overlapping quasi-fields which we had
to try to cast light into.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It is certainly true that pioneering projects, by their very
nature, are likely to attract adverse comment, and that, with a subject as
vague as ‘Fantasy’, certain definitions are likely to be challenged and
apparently major omissions questioned. However, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction</i> showed that such a project is
both worthwhile and hugely entertaining, and, hopefully, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of Fantasy</i> will do the same all over again.
Certainly, on the strength of the material seen so far, and on the standard set
by the previous book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of
Fantasy</i> looks like being this year’s must-buy. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Encyclopedia of Fantasy</i>. Edited by John Clute and John Grant.
Contributing Editors: Mike Ashley, Roz Kaveney, David Langford and Ron Tiner.
Consultant Editors: David G Hartwell and Gary Westfahl. Published 3 April 1997
by Little Brown, price £45 hardback.</b></div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-25846246558926674902020-04-14T10:16:00.002+01:002020-04-14T10:19:06.595+01:00THE REAL RIPPER?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Michael Slade is the
author of a series of hard-hitting horror novels which include the best-sellers
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Headhunter</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutthroat</i>. His latest novel is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ripper</i>,
in which Slade reveals who Jack the Ripper really was. David Howe met up with
Slade recently to talk about the new book.</b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first surprise is that Michael Slade doesn’t actually
exist, and the person sitting opposite me is a genial and chatty Canadian
criminal lawyer named Jay Clark who is part of a changing trio of criminal
lawyers and their families who write as Michael Slade.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Their latest book, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ripper,
</i>is based on London’s most famous murderer. Someone is killing women in
Vancouver in a manner reminiscent of Jack the Ripper. In solving the murders,
the police must work out the motivation and rationale behind the killings,
which research also explains who the ‘real’ Jack the Ripper was.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I asked Jay how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ripper</i>
came about. ‘After <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cutthroat</i> I was
looking for a subject for a new book,’ he explained. ‘And a friend said look,
you’re a lawyer, now imagine the Director of Public Prosecutions wants to
charge someone for the Ripper murders. Take all the suspects who have been
offered forward and come up with a case that would stand up in front of a jury.
When the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] do a drug sweep, what they do is
they put up a board called a hit board, and they get photographs of all the
various people in the Skid Row area and they put pictures up of everyone who
they think might be the main traffickers. Then they go out and get evidence and
they fill it all in on the hit list. So what we did was we took a board and we
got pictures of all the Ripper suspects and put them along the top and then
isolated the evidence against each person. We then took the Ripper crimes and
isolated all the objective evidence. We know there are five certain Ripper
cases so what is there? The chalk thing: “The Juwes are the men who will not be
blamed for nothing”. What does it mean? You have to have an explanation for it.
Your suspect has to have been in London at the time and has to have been known
to have been in London at the time. You’ve got to have a motive.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘So what we did then was we worked out in the evidence
against each person something which answered each one of the questions and when
we worked it all through, the only person who answered every single one of the
questions was Aleister Crowley’s suspect: Stephenson. Crowley believed that the
Ripper was forming the sign of the cross with the locations of his killings.
The head of the Order of the New Dawn, to which Crowley belonged at the time,
S. L. MacGregor Mathers, wrote a book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Astral Projection, Ritual Magic and Alchemy</i>, which was published in
1888, the year of the Ripper. And the idea was that if you ritualistically form
a cross, then you will open the way to the astral realm. The occult belief was
that the “now” we’re living is a reflection of the astral realm. If you can
project yourself into the astral realm through ritual magic, you can change
things there which will have an effect in the “now”. And that’s how you conjure
demons.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘So when I linked that to the Tarot, which is a means of
reading the astral plane, lo and behold, there is an upside down cross on the
Hanged Man, and there is also the triangle, because the fellow who was
Crowley’s suspect, also wrote about the Ripper using the pen-name Tautridelta,
which means Cross Three Triangles. In this tarot card is the cross and the
triangle. Triple the triangle and you can form a pentagram and then in order to
get into the astral realm, you use a live woman as an altar, and the female
sign is also present on the tarot card. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘Whoa! I thought. Just a second here. Because I’d worked on
a hundred murder cases; and after you deal with these people for eighteen
months biweekly you begin to realise how the mind works. When you see people
going psychotic there are common themes and this linking of symbolism with
ritual murder is a classic symptom. One other thing I did was get a
mathematician to work out the probability of the Ripper’s murders taking place
at the points of a perfect cross and it came out as one in fifteen million two
hundred and forty-nine sevenths. That’s the point at which I rested my case.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Jack the Ripper was back in the news last year with the
publication of a manuscript that was claimed to be his diary. ‘Luckily for me
it was proved to be a fake,’ says Jay. ‘They put it through tests and
determined that the paper was okay for the period but the ink was about thirty
years out and there just isn’t that large a margin of error. Before they proved
it … Jeez! … I just couldn’t sleep. What if my publishers said, “Oh Jay, we
don’t need your novel anymore you’re going to have to go away and write another
one to match the diary!”</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘There was my professional reputation to consider as well.
If I’d picked the wrong man! They ended up marketing the diary in Canada and
England with a sticker that asks the reader to make their own mind up as to its
validity. You match wits with the professionals and weigh the evidence, which
makes you into a juror. It gives you all of the counting down of the Ripper at
the beginning of it, so it’s a good edition even if it isn’t genuine. And of
course their suspect couldn’t be the Ripper, because the real Ripper was the
fellow who’s identified in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ripper</i>!’</div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-26569456000949293892020-02-01T16:05:00.000+00:002020-02-01T16:06:18.487+00:00Author Influences<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
For issue 200 of STARBURST I asked a number of authors to list their influences in under 100 words ... </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MICHAEL MOORCOCK</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My influences are clear because they consist of the small
library my father left behind when he fled the domestic hearth – Edgar Rice
Burroughs, Edwin Lester Arnold, George Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, Anon (author
of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Timothy Tatters</i>) – and books I
enjoyed as a kid – Richmal Crompton, P. G. Wodehouse, the Sexton Blake Library
and Frank Richards’ school stories, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Planet
Stories</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tempest</i> and most
important of all John Bunyan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pilgrim’s
Progress</i>. Visionary fiction, rather than science fiction or fantasy, has
always appealed to me (I’ve read very little genre sf) and I still find a lot
more pleasure in Milton and Melville than in the prosaic predictions of
Heinlein & Co.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEPHEN LAWS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Alright, I admit it. I have all of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starburst</i> magazines, going back to Issue No 1. Some of them are
even in (gasp) binders. Back then, in 1978, it seemed that high quality
magazines dealing with all aspects of ‘fantastic’ cinema and related matters
were very few and far between. As an avid fan, I eagerly awaited each issue and
its excellent interviews with genre luminaries, together with insightful
reviews. Many things ‘fanned the flame’ of my enthusiasm back then. My first
novel was published seven years later and when I look back on the various
aspects that helped keep the flame alive I’m quite convinced that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Starburst</i> magazine was one of them.
Thanks to you all.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STAN NICHOLLS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science Fiction novelist and genre columnist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Reality is becoming science fiction. And it’s science
fiction that’s doing it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Okay: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">inter alia</i>.
But what started with garish paperbacks under the school desk now looks like
the best education for slamming into futurity. Bring on the visionaries,
romantics, utopians. Give me daydreams and nightmares, fantasy and fancies,
speculation and scaremongering. What if the critlit establishment’s sneers rise
in direct proportion to the level of imagination displayed? Who wanted to go to
their hard cheese and whine party anyway?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
You can keep Virginia Woolf’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Collected Shopping Lists</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Just leave me the key to the FTL drive in my head.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
LES EDWARDS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror and fantasy artist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I can’t remember a time when I didn’t draw and I’ve been
influenced by so many artists along the way that it seems invidious to choose
just one. However, if you tie me down and beat me, I will confess to being much
affected by a particular comic strip. It was drawn by Frank Bellamy and it
appeared in the centre pages of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eagle</i>.
It chronicled the adventures of a Roman centurion and is perhaps best described
as ‘proto-sword and sorcery’. The strip was called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Heros the Spartan</i> and I wish someone would reprint it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RICHARD LAYMON</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My earliest warp in the direction of horror may have been a
bedtime reading of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ali Baba and the Seven
Thieves</i> by Daisy, my great aunt Emma’s companion, who was babysitting for
my brother and I. A toddler at the time, I was so terrified by the story that I
cried. I’ve never fully recovered. The story creeped me out badly – especially
the beheading scene. (Oddly enough, decapitation rears its ugly head in nearly
all of my novels.)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Later, television gave me the old Universal monster movies.
Other major early influences were shows such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Outer Limits</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alfred
Hitchcock Presents</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thriller</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Twilight Zone</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The Hardy Boys books introduced me to the thrills of
reading. My idol, in my early teens, was Robert Bloch. I liked the simplicity,
scares, humour and tricky plots of his stories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
NICHOLAS ROYLE</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Dark Fantasy novelist and editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The 1968 <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Huckleberry
Hound Annual</i> contained a Pixie, Dixie and Mr Jinks picture story entitled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Frightful Night</i>. Pixie and Dixie were
two mice, Mr Jinks the big cat which used to terrorise them. In this tale, Mr
Jinks puts a paper bag on his head, attaches bolts either side and comes on
like a monster to the mice. Unmoved, however, they retaliate with a
dressmaker’s dummy kitted out with similar bag and a fur-lined coat. Now this
was frightening, both for Mr Jinks and for the five-year-old boy sitting
reading it next to the central heating vent in the dining room of his parents’
house in Whitley Bay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
If any reader has a copy of the 1968 annual for sale that
would make me very happy.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
JOE DONNELLY</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first influence, as far as horror is concerned, was the
mentally generated creature, the Id of Dr Morbius in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Forbidden Planet</i>. I was six years old and the sudden appearance on
screen of this monster, visible only as pulses of electricity, absolutely
terrified me. I had nightmares for weeks. It scared me because I could not
comprehend its existence.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I’ve had the same occult unease ever since, the shiver at
what cannot easily be explained, the dread of the creature under the bed and
its relative who makes the floorboards creak in the dark. I write about them to
keep them at bay.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Also, in childhood, I discovered Celtic mythology, full of
supernatural and terrifying tales. Most of my stories have a hint of the old
weird ways.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
ANDREW HARMAN</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Influences? Me? Definitely. Four people figure large: Gerry
Anderson – a man who proved spaceships, Martians and dramatic disasters are
real; Oliver Postgate – who showed that a small furry animal called Tog, a
saggy old cloth cat called Bagpuss and little knitted creatures whistling in
outer space are all very real; then there’s Mum and Dad who encouraged me to
build Lego Thunderbird 2s, Meccano iron chickens and to search for Pogles in
the wood.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Others include: Brian Aldiss, J. R. R. Tolkien, Messrs
Asimov, Clarke, Harrison and Bear, James Cameron, Steven Spielberg, George
Lucas, Monty Python and, of course, a certain Mr P…</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
DAVID SUTTON</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror and fantasy author and editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I watched, in terror and wonder, the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quatermass and the Pit</i> serial on BBC
Television (1958/9), little did I know by how much my future life would be
influenced. I was eleven years old. After Quatermass’ warning to the world in
the final episode, I was left stunned and deeply moved. Looking back, I can see
with clarity how Nigel Kneale’s blend of science fiction, ancient mysteries,
ghosts, magic and mind control would later merge me perfectly into the
interdisciplinary thinking that has shaped my life and interests. I am
essentially a Fortean and Kneale’s serial had those elements which suggest it
is at our peril that we narrowly pigeonhole life and our thought processes …
and since the renegade professor haunted the TV screens those many years ago, I
have gone on to work widely within the genre, editing and publishing magazines
and books, and writing fiction. But the doing of all that was largely given
impetus by that thrilling and wonderful serial.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PETER ATKINS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist and screenwriter</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Along with my generation’s usual suspects (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Famous Monsters</i>, TV screenings of
Universal movies, Moorcock’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Worlds</i>,
etc), the real guilty party in the corruption of eight-year old Pete was a
Liverpool newsagent. Mr Ford (I still don’t know his first name) was one of a
vanished breed of port-city entrepreneurs, relying for his stock on grey
marketeering, merchant seamen bearing back Treasures from the New World –
comics, monster movie mags, horror paperbacks. I was to be the first of my
family to go to University and my father no doubt had his own dreams for me.
But it was no use. From the moment I saw Dwight Frye’s painted nightmare face
staring out of the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">FM</i> 18, I
was lost to the world of realism and middle-management. Thanks, Mr Ford.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GRAHAM MASTERTON</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a boy, I was strongly influenced by Jules Verne, H. G.
Wells and Edgar Allan Poe, but also by more whimsical writers like Lewis
Carroll. The idea of parallel and alternative worlds constantly fascinates me –
whether these worlds exist inside mirrors (as in my novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mirror</i>), or dreams (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night
Warriors</i>) or even within solid walls (<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Walkers).</i>
In my latest novel <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spirit</i>, much of
the action takes place inside storybooks. Horror is a difficult and challenging
medium because you are creating a ‘reality’ which can defy all the laws of
sanity and logic. Have you looked into your wallpaper lately?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
RAMSEY CAMPBELL</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
While the influences of Lovecraft and M. R. James are easily
found in my stuff, the writer who showed me the route I was to follow was Fritz
Leiber. For me he’s still the greatest master of the tale of the urban
supernatural, in which the terror doesn’t invade the big city but is part of
it. It was an honour for me to know him and once to read alongside him in New
York, and his criticisms in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fantastic</i>
showed me how to improve. He believed that the best horror fiction involved
both wonder and terror, and so it should. Read him and see.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEPHEN GALLAGHER</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror and thriller novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I think I’m part of a generation of British writers who,
whether they realise it or not, owe a lot to Nigel Kneale. One of my earliest
memories is of being at a big family party and seeing everything stop while the
TV set – this being the time when most people didn’t have one, but everyone
knew someone who did – was trundled out so that the grownups could watch <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quatermass and the Pit</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Can’t remember a damn thing about what I saw, but the room’s
awed atmosphere is with me still. I’ve a suspicion that I’ve been
subconsciously trying to recreate it for others ever since.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Kneale’s great achievement was to stake out a territory that
was confident, contemporary, and ours. Suddenly the call of the Weird was
coming from somewhere much closer to home.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEVE BOWKETT (aka BEN LEECH)</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
One summer Saturday afternoon, as a boy of ten living in a
Welsh mining village, I walked to the local coal tip to go fossil hunting. In
my dufflebag; sandwiches, hammer, chisel and a copy of the first ever <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> annual. Having dug a haul of
fossil ferns and leaves, I sat to eat my tea and read of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lair of the Zarbi Supremo</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Sons of the Crab</i> until evening.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The twilight deepened. Lights came on in the valley below
and the stars appeared above. Horizons of time, space and possibility were
opened up for me then. I’ve been exploring ever since.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STORM CONSTANTINE</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a child I was influenced by the myths of ancient cultures
– Egypt, Mesopotamia, Greece – and wrote lots of rambling stories about gods
and pharaohs. Later, I discovered those writers who redefined fantastic
literature in the ‘70s – mainly, for me, Mike Moorcock, Tanith Lee and Jane
Gaskell. Reading their work inspired me to invent my own strange worlds and
cultures. My most recent source of inspiration is the work of animators like
the Brothers Quay and Jan Svenkmajer. Watching one of their weirdly,
discomfortingly beautiful films ensures the removal of writer’s block! My
ambition is to have one of my stories animated by the Brothers Quay, so if
they’re reading this …</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
CHRISTOPHER FOWLER</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
London at night, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pan
Books of Horror</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Exorcist</i>,
Evelyn Waugh, Dickens, Joe Orton, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Witchfinder
General</i>, J. G. Ballard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Barbarella</i>,
Ray Bradbury, grotesque Victorian children’s books, my mother, Mervyn Peake, M.
R. James, Michael Nyman, Hammer, Greek myths, Peter Cushing, John Barry, Conan
Doyle, the Thames, Lucifer, Edmund Crispin, Tony Hancock, Ray Harryhausen, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Beano</i>, Aurora model kits, Greenwich
library, E. M. Forster, Gilbert and Sullivan, Stephen Sondheim, Monty Python,
Shakespeare, Marvel Comics, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Quatermass</i>,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Famous Monsters of Filmland</i>,
pre-Raphaelites, Woolwich Odeon, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Playboy</i>,
Boileau and Narcejec, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St Trinians</i>,
Norman Wisdom, Tobe Hooper, Dario Argento, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carry
On</i> films, the Bible, Soho, sex and … death.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
JESSICA PALMER</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science Fiction and fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Writing is a hereditary disease for which there is no cure.
However, one cannot refute the influence of environment. I learned about
graphic violence and horror where one should … in the home. Working as a
psychiatric nurse completed my education. Experience taught me that truth, even
more than beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and the murky depths of
subconscious, a much safer place to be than reality. Hence, I set about to
create my own verity. Since sadism is the inevitable twin of masochism, I chose
to inflict this truth on others while the genre generally reflects my mood.
Since I’ve switched from horror to sf and fantasy, I must deduce my mental
health is improving.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
TOM HOLT</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Holt aged twelve was stunted, sullen and fat; accordingly,
much kicked by his peers; tried kicking back – mug’s game, legs too short;
adopted pose of intellectual superiority (even wrote poetry; book of same
published at age twelve) led to further, now thoroughly-deserved mayhem.
By-product; at age twelve, read plays of Aristophanes (earliest surviving
intentionally funny Western literature), which are what’s now termed comic
fantasy – dazzling leaps of imagination undercut at every turn by awareness of
own ludicrousness; late seventies (still stunted, fat; less sullen), recognises
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hitch-Hikers’ Guide</i> is basically the
same thing and people seem to like it, decides to have a go. The rest is –
well, scarcely history; let’s call it bibliography.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
BRIAN STABLEFORD</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science Fiction novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if Dorian Gray had paused for reflection after picking
up the knife? What if he had put it down again, realising that the
monstrousness of the painting changed nothing except for its genre? What if he
had understood that by virtue of his magnificent excesses Basil Hallward’s
exercise in old-fashioned representative realism had metamorphosed into a
masterpiece of modern impressionism? What if he had said to himself: “This is
not the end, but the beginning”…?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What if Oscar Wilde, inspired by his character’s great leap
of the imagination, had challenged the Marquess of Queensberry to a duel
instead of a lawsuit, and had shot the foul-mouthed bully dead, thus avoiding
crucifixion by the moronic moralists of his day and extending his glittering
career…?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The possibilities are endless – but then, they always are.
That’s the whole point, isn’t it?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
LISA TUTTLE</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
As a child, clambering like a monkey on my father’s floor to
ceiling bookshelves, I read whatever appealed to me, which was mostly the weird
or fantastic. Omnibus collections of great supernatural and ghost stories, the
collected works of Edgar Allen Poe and Ambrose Bierce mingled strangely in my
mind with gleanings from the selected works of Sigmund Freud. Also there was a
book called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bikey the Skycycle</i> about
a bicycle capable of interplanetary journeys. Ray Bradbury was my greatest
discovery at the public library; for a long time he and E. Nesbit were my chief
literary idols.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MARK MORRIS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Compressing my influences into one hundred words is almost
impossible, but Rupert Bear, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i>,
the Pan/Fontana Horror/Ghost collections, and punk rock comes pretty close. I
still recall the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">frisson</i> of fear I
felt reading the story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rupert and Ragetty</i>,
in which a spiny, root-like creature crawls from beneath a felled tree during a
storm, my awe and terror as the Autons – living mannequins – jerked to life and
crashed through shop windows in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor
Who</i>. I recall reading horror stories under the bedclothes, then lying
awake, convinced that every sound was a horrible <u>something</u> coming to get
me. And punk rock? Well, that made a rebel of me, gave me the pig-headedness to
stick with what I wanted to do, no matter how discouraging people were.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
DAVID GARNETT</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science fiction novelist and editor</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My biggest influence? Short stories.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The first sf book I ever read was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">More Penguin Science Fiction</i>, edited by Brian Aldiss. That was what
hooked me on science fiction. I read every anthology I could find, then went
onto the magazines. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Worlds</i> was
always my favourite. When I began writing short stories, that was where I sent
them. Michael Moorcock was the editor – and he sent them all back!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
That was all a long time ago, and I’m still hooked on short
sf. Reading it, writing it. But I still haven’t had a story in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New Worlds</i>. Instead, I’m the editor.
Which is nearly as good.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
GUY N. SMITH</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
My earliest influence into writing came from my mother (E.
M. Weale), a pre-war historical writer who encourage me to write. At the age of
twelve I was having short stories published in the children’s page of a local
newspaper. Many of these were horror and sf. I read <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weird Tales</i> as soon as I was old enough but my greatest influence
in the genre was Badger Books (Spencer) and particularly R. Lionel Fanthorpe
who wrote most of these novels under a variety of pseudonyms. Much later I was
to form a close friendship with Fanthorpe. I have always liked pulp fiction and
I think that the best of this was to be found in the New English Library horror
list of the early seventies. The covers were superb, the stories basic but very
readable. I have always been an advocate of <u>simplicity</u>; I think that
today there is too much emphasis on length and complicated psychological plots.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEPHEN JONES</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror and fantasy editor and columnist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
100 words to list my influences? If I had ten times that
many, I couldn’t do justice to all those people, publications and pictures that
helped meld my malleable young mind: Walt Disney’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Shaggy Dog</i>, which was the first movie I ever saw in the cinema
… Stan Lee’s new age of Marvel Comics … anything illustrated by Murphy
Anderson, Carmine Infantino or Neal Adams for DC Comics … Willis O’Brien’s
mighty <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">King Kong </i>… the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weird Tales</i> circle of writers such as H.
P. Lovecraft, Robert E Howard, Clark Ashton Smith … and of course, Forrest J.
Ackerman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Famous Monsters of Filmland</i>
magazine … Without any of the above, I would not be having such fun writing and
editing today!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
KIM NEWMAN</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist and genre critic</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the horror field, fear is overrated. I’m often asked if
I’m scared by what I write (sometimes, but not in the way they mean) or what
scares me (the usual things). Actually, I’m far more likely to write about what
angers me than what frightens me. The central nugget of many of my stories and
novels is something momentous or trivial that prompts me to foaming fury:
resurgent fascism, the tabloid press, queue-jumpers, colorisation of old
movies, the Government. A graphologist once examined my handwriting and told me
I had a wild temper. As a child, I was a tantrum freak, but in my personal life
it’s been a long time since I screamed and shouted and hit someone with a
chair. It doesn’t all go into the work, but a great deal of it does. There you
have it: why I write – rage.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
COLIN GREENLAND</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science Fiction novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
When I was at school I bought a battered American paperback
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sorcerer’s Amulet</i> by Michael
Moorcock. The exotic hybrid of sword and sorcery in a dizzyingly decadent far
future looked irresistible in a remainder shop in Folkestone. It wasn’t until I
got the book home that I realised it was volume two of four. After a mighty
quest for the other three mystic tomes, I read the whole story over and over
again, mesmerised. The horned horses of the Kamarg! The Silver Bridge at
Deau-Vere! The brazen ornithopters!</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
I see that in April 1988, in some access of nostalgia, I got
Mike to autograph <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sorcerer’s Amulet</i>
for me. ‘To Colin,’ he wrote. ‘How long can this last then?’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
25 years so far, Mike.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PETER JAMES</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Back in 1970 when I was 22 and writing a series on computers
for Channel 19 TV in Toronto, I went to MIT in Boston and met Marvyn Minsky.
During an informal conversation he told me he believed that by the year 2000
man would have successfully replicated human consciousness in a computer – and
proved by definition that God does not exist.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
This one statement fired my imagination more than any other
single remark I have ever heard in my life and it made me realise what I really
wanted to do, which was to explore through writing the (sometimes very blurred)
boundaries between science, medicine and the supernatural.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What I find enormously exciting as we move towards the end
of this century is that we are beginning to see a new openness in scientists
prepared to admit that in many cases the more they learn, the more they realise
how little they know, together with a growing consensus among scientists that
it is highly improbable that we are alone in universe.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror and science fiction gives writers a genre in which
they can probe the unknown in all its forms, and if we look back in history, it
is startling and enormously exciting to see how many immovable tenets of the
scientific establishment have been ultimately disproved by writers as visionary
as Jules Verne and Arthur C. Clarke. And we are seeing some of our own
generation's tenets beginning to look less solid: Darwinism, The Big Bang
Theory and the Speed of Light are all under challenge right now, in ways that
could eventually lead to us having to rewrite not only the past, but the
future. I can't think of a more exciting field for a writer to work in than
this genre and I feel very lucky to be a part of it. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
JONATHAN WYLIE</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In everyone’s life there is a moment, an incident, that
sparks a major change. In the case of Jonathan Wylie, this was when ‘he’ fell
in love with his other half. Jonathan Wylie is in fact the pseudonym of Mark
and Julia Smith, who met while working in publishing.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Having sparked each other into creative life, it seemed
natural to work in the fantasy genre – a genre we had both loved since
childhood (formative influences being Mervyn Peake, Zenna Henderson and John
Wyndham), and had been involved with professionally.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Thirteen books later, we can’t imagine a more fulfilling way
of life.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
MARK CHADBOURN</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the sun-filled 1960s when my days were packed with
American comic books and bubblegum cards, a little darkness entered my life – a
film with the cheesy but irresistible title <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night
of the Demon</i>. From the eerie opening shots of Jacques Tourneur’s classy
little world of shadows and light to the terrifying final scene of demonic
retribution, I sat frozen with my first experience of fear. Ancient evil, runes
and curses, a heart-pounding chase through night-dark woods and one of the most
unnerving scores ever. I was hooked. Call me perverse, but from that first
viewing I knew that creepy world was the one I wanted to inhabit.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
JOSH KIRBY</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy artist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
H. G. Wells and Jules Verne (such a kind man!) were early
influences. Film makers plundered their books for subject matter and Saturday
morning pictures acted like a magnet to me. I jostled amongst crowds of excited
kids, eagerly waiting to see what happened to Flash Gordon in this week’s
episode.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
A boys’ paper, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Modern
World</i>, combined a bit of science, some technical future-gazing and short
stories – one about a valley of giant insects after a botched experiment.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Science fiction played with ideas and possibilities in a way
that allowed the imagination time and space in which to roam.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
It seemed to me a way of thinking that set in motion
atrophied areas of the brain, long neglected in benighted times.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PIERS ANTHONY</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
In the course of a less than happy youth, I discovered an
escape in escape literature, which I suspect helped save my sanity. I later
fled my less than ideal working environment by writing fiction about familiar
things: space travel, weird alien worlds, monsters, and magic. When I managed
to sell some, so much the better. I love being paid for having fun! Now I am
returning to the real world to explore a subject of some ambition: the entire
evolution and geography of humankind, with warnings for the future, presented
as historical fiction. What better pursuit can there be?</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
STEVE HARRIS</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The blame for my presence in this field falls squarely on
the shoulders of two guys named Philip and one named Stephen. The first is Phil
Painting, like myself, a left-handed Libran. One day long ago, when everyone
had long hair and an interest in mind-expanding substances, Phil comes over to
me in a bar, thrusts a book into my hand and demands I read it. The book is
called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eye in the Sky</i> and is written
by the second Phil: Philip K. Dick. I fall in love. Times passes. I pick up a
Stephen King and fall in love again. Time passes. I finally realise that when I
grow up I want to be a writer.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
IAN MILLER</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Fantasy artist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Some of the people, books and films which have influenced
me: James Ensor, Rupert Bear, Albrecht Dürer, the original<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Flash Gordon</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wizard of
Oz</i>, Goya, Bosch, Mr Sharp, Moebius, Kubin, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tiger Tiger</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Demolished
Man</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Blade Runner</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night of the</i> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hunter</i>, The <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gormenghast </i>trilogy,
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Treasure Island</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Green Child</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Small Creeps
Day</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord of the Rings</i>,
Kandinsky, Bonnard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Railway Accident
& Other Stories</i>, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Eagle &
Lion</i> comic, Ralph Bakshi, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Times</i>,
cinema and deck chairs and brass bands in St James Park.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
F. PAUL WILSON</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Horror novelist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Somehow I was hardwired for the weird and fantastic. Can't
explain how or why. Nothing ever even remotely monsterish in my staid,
middle-class, church-going, three-child, two-parent, one-dog, Scotch-Irish,
Roman Catholic American household. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Until TV brought <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Beast from 20,000 Fathoms</i> into my living room in June of 1953.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Remember the face-hugger in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alien</i>, the way it came out of the egg and into John Hurt's visor?
If so, you've got some idea of the sudden intimacy between my face and the
family TV when I first saw the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beast</i>
trailer.</div>
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I think it was love. I was only six, but something in me
responded to Harryhausen's monster stomping through Manhattan's financial
district with all these screaming, terrified New Yorkers tripping and falling
over each other in their panicked flight from it.</div>
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Like coming home … and I hadn't even known I'd been away.</div>
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<br /></div>
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FREDA WARRINGTON</div>
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Fantasy novelist</div>
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<br /></div>
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If I had to name one major influence on my work it would
have to be the Charnwood Forest area of Leicestershire where I was brought up.
I love the bracken-covered slopes, gnarled oaks and ancient rocks of Bradgate
Park; the sweeping views and mysterious rhododendron groves of Beacon Hill; the
cathedral vaults and bluebell carpets of Swithland Woods; the lovely villages
of granite and thatch. Their influence on me can be summed up in one word: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">atmosphere</i>. Charnwood has an
other-worldly feel in which anything seems possible; you feel you might have
stepped into another world in which characters from fantasy could come to life.
It’s this atmosphere, a unique eerie ambience, that also attracts me to my favourite
books, and which I try to recreate in my own writing.</div>
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<br /></div>
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MAGGIE FUREY</div>
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Fantasy novelist</div>
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<br /></div>
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I always wanted to write, because I’ve always loved reading.
A childhood illness stopped me leading an active life, so I got my adventures
from books instead. Having discovered C. S. Lewis, I took off into the realms
of the fantastic with Tolkien, Bradbury, Sturgeon, McCaffrey and many others. I
then found myself mentally rewriting plots - this started because there were no
good female roles in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lord of the Rings</i>
- and decided to write <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Aurian</i> after
losing my job. I owe a great debt to Miss Dixon my English teacher, who always
encouraged me, and to my erstwhile employers, for obvious reasons!</div>
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<br /></div>
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RICHARD CHRISTIAN MATHESON</div>
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Horror novelist, film scriptwriter and television
produced/scriptwriter</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Irony</i>.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The facts of backwards; the chill illogic of paradox. In the
upside-down terrain of irony, the cruel-hearted find joy and giggling children
murder. Significance is empty. The apparent elusive. Words play tricks, faces
mislead, things fall upward. As a rudiment of fantasy, irony has few rivals.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The subversion of overt definitions has always appealed to
me, in my writing. What could be better? Meanings within meanings; the quiet,
vile truth masquerading as mannerly and safe. Or the benign cloaked in cruelty.
Yet, however expected, it’s not simply the reverse of something which makes it
interesting to me.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There’s a secondary dimension I’m fascinated by: the hidden
core so totally undermining the surface that a kind of macabre poetry arises.
When it works, nothing remains trustworthy; the reader loses control.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
And the fun really begins.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
PHIL RICKMAN</div>
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Author</div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
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</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Well, there was M.R. James and P.M. Hubbard and Enid Blyton,
of course, but the real inspiration was a seminal work of non-fiction. <i>The View Over Atlantis</i> by Earth
Mysteries guru John Michell, opened up a new Britain for me. OK, some of the book’s
ideas have been knocked down over the years, but it still brings me out in a
warm, mystical glow. And I still can’t look at an unfamiliar slice of
countryside without zooming in on anomalous bumps and mounds and linear
patterns, indicating the presence of … er … unknown energies</div>
<br />
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
DAVID HOWE</div>
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Author and genre columnist</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What got me into this field? Discovering that my local
newsagent for whom I delivered papers had copies of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">MonsterMag</i> on the top shelves … watching my first horror film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taste the Blood of Dracula,</i> on
television … being scared witless by the Cybermen and the Ice Warriors on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Doctor Who</i> … discovering horror novels
through Stephen King’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">‘Salem’s Lot</i>
and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Shining</i> … attending special
screenings of Tobe Hooper’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Texas
Chainsaw Massacre</i> and thinking it was rubbish, and Alfred Soles’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Communion</i> and quite enjoying it …
‘variety bags’ with trading cards from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Outer Limits</i> inside … building Aurora glow-in-the-dark model kits but using
the non-glowing parts as they could be painted to look more realistic … seeing
penny-arcades for the first time at London Zoo and being fascinated by the
mechanics behind the little horror scenarios that were played out in miniature
… late night horror double bills on BBC 2 … all these and more affected and
shaped the young Howe. And I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way.</div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-17943395210246232132020-02-01T15:56:00.000+00:002020-02-01T15:56:06.688+00:00HORROR COMPANION - Kim Newman<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">David Howe talks to
editor Kim Newman about an impressive new guide to the horror genre<o:p></o:p></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
There have been many books written about horror films. The
first appears to have been a general overview of the genre by Michael Laclos
called <i>Le fantastique au cinema</i> in
1958 but since then a countless number of works have been produced. The quality
of these ‘guides’ has varied from photo-packed works which barely scratch the
surface of the subject to Stephen Jones’ exhaustively compiled and beautifully
presented <i>Illustrated Movie Guides</i>.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What has been missing, however, has been a good
encyclopaedic view of the genre. Something that takes in not only the films –
which tend to form the backbone of the genre – but also the film makers:
directors, producers, stars, visual effects designers, make-up artistes;
authors: of films and screenplays through to horror fiction; and also the
themes: everything from ‘the old dark house’ to ‘witchcraft’ and ‘serial
killers’.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The BFI Companion to
Horror</b> (Cassell, £19.99 lfp/b) sets out to redress the balance by providing
just this sort of genre overview. Overseeing this massive task of chronicling
over a century of horror is journalist, novelist and broadcaster Kim Newman.
Newman has been influential in the genre for many years and has several
previous works of non-fiction to his credit (including the seminal <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Nightmare Movies</b>, first published in
1985 and re-issued in a substantially revised edition in 1988).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The story of the<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">
Companion to Horror</b> started several years ago, when Newman was contributing
material to <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The BFI Companion to the
Western</b>. ‘At the time,’ he explained, ‘I told the editor that if they were
ever in the market for a horror volume, I’d like to throw my hat in the ring as
a possible editor. We had lunch, agreed that it was a good idea, and then
everything went quiet for several years while the deal was put together. I
wanted to create a reference book that would give me a chance to encompass the
whole genre rather than just pick at segments of it. This sort of book tends to
be known by their editor rather than by title, and I quite liked the idea of
there being a big book out there known as “Newman’s” alongside “Maltin’s” or
“Halliwell’s”.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Once the green light was given for the project, Newman
started defining what the book would cover.</div>
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<br /></div>
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‘The initial outlining was probably the most conceptually
difficult bit of the book,’ said Newman. ‘I had to decide what the entries
should be, how long they should run, and who should write them. Philip Strick
and Phil Hardy were working in parallel on BFI Companions to Science Fiction
and Crime, so I tried to avoid too much overlap with their areas.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The brief was to deliver around 200,000 words. Of course,
this wasn’t long enough – it would have been easier to produce a book twice the
size, and there are a great many pieces contained within the book I wish could
have been longer. However, I worked very hard at the editing stage to keep it
to length (it came in about 4000 words over).</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘In choosing the contributors, I decided who I wanted to
work with – both established names in the field and newer, underexposed folks –
and tried to give out batches of entries to people who were especially
qualified – Tom Hutchinson did all the horror stars, for example. Steve Jones
handled the character actors, Tony Mechele the TV series, Christopher Frayling
the major themes, David McGillivray the animal entries, Mark Ashworth the
starlets and so on. Some people – Alan Jones, David Prothero – were useful
all-rounders. I personally tried to stay away from writing about people or
themes I’d written about before, and I also did a lot of sweep-up work on those
entries which were so brief that it was not worth commissioning them out.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘In choosing what to cover, I decided that at least half of
the entries would be mandatory – those on certain characters, actors,
sub-genres, directors, writers. On top of all the people known for their horror
work, I wanted to spotlight areas that impinged on the genre, and include
entries on Ingmar Bergman and Franz Kafka as well as Wes Craven and Stephen
King.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
‘The main surprise once the book started to take shape was
how complex and inter-connected everything turned out to be. There’s a
difference between knowing a lot of facts and seeing them all assembled
together, so you can cross-reference them.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
What marks the <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Companion
to Horror </b>out is the attention to detail that is contained within its
pages. There are lengthy pieces, as you might expect, on Dracula and
Frankenstein, but there are also significant articles on numerous directors
including George A Romero, Roman Polanski and David Cronenberg. Horror authors
are well catered for with entries on popular wordsmiths like James Herbert,
Stephen King and Edgar Allan Poe as well as many lesser known talents like Ray
Russell, Gary Brandner and Harry Adam Knight. Horror on television is also
covered, with entries including <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Doctor
Who</b>, <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Ace of Wands</b> and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Chiller</b> as well as <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Scooby-Doo, Where Are You?</b> </div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
The book is wonderful to dip into, with articles on over 500
films, 500 figures associated with the industry and 100 television series as
well as numerous thematic entries. The entries range from a few lines to a
couple of pages in length. Perhaps the only disappointment is that the book
does not claim to be ‘complete’. Films have, on the whole, been omitted in
favour of presenting previously unknown information on the genre, but this was
a deliberate policy and allows the lesser known information to shine.</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
At a penny short of twenty pounds, the book is not cheap,
but it is by far the best chronicle of the horror genre available. Newman,
however, smiles when asked if he is pleased with the end result. ‘I’m just
pleased that it got finished! Seriously, I hope it functions genuinely as a
companion to the genre, and also that it fits in with the BFI’s publishing
program. I assumed all along that people who buy it will already have a couple
of books on the subject, and so I deliberately didn’t duplicate the efforts of
previous authoritative works by including hundreds of capsule reviews of
specific films. What this book does is try to make out the patterns that are
larger than specific films – the themes, careers, ideas and recurrences that
tie the genre together.’</div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The BFI Companion to
Horror</b> is arguably the most important genre book to be published so far
this decade. Newman is already hopeful of being able to expand any future
editions and with the groundwork already set, this can only cement this
publication’s place as one of the most interesting, readable and accessible
guides to the genre yet published.</div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-11710453428759241922020-01-29T12:56:00.002+00:002020-01-29T12:56:16.394+00:00SHADOWMAN by Dennis Etchison<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="text-align: justify;">Although Dennis Etchison has been
writing professionally for thirty-four years, his name is not well known in
England. That is to soon change as Raven Books, an imprint of Robinson
Publishing, bring out some of his new novels, starting with </span><b style="text-align: justify;">Shadowman</b><i style="text-align: justify;">.</i></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
‘<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Shadowman </b>is essentially a prequel to my short story <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Country,</i> which won both the
British and World Fantasy Awards back in 1981,’ explains Etchison. ‘Over the
years I found myself wondering what happened to the Jack Martin character to
lead into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dark Country.</i> Because
these people that I write about seem very real to me, they don’t seem like
characters in a book. What happens in <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Shadowman</b>
causes him to want to get away from it all and to recover from the events of
the novel. Unfortunately what happens in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Dark Country</i> is the same sort of touble again. The point is that there are
some archetypal problems that we have to work out in our lives. We don’t
necessarily know what the cause is but they keep following us around. We’ve all
had that experience in life. As you look back you see certain familiar
patterns, certain sorts of trouble repeating themselves. Martin is very much a
passive victim in these two tales but that is the nature of this sort of
problem. You think your life is going along perfectly, you’re not worried about
anything, and all of a sudden from nowhere something presents itself and you
have to try to solve it and survive.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Etchison confirms that his books
are very much character led, and that in the case of <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Shadowman</b>, he actually had a different ending in mind from the one
he eventually wrote. ‘When I started writing the novel I thought the ending was
going to be different and I was rather surprised to find out what the real
explanations were. It’s not because I’m mindless when I write, but it’s because
the people in the books become very real to me and it’s a question of being
honest and letting them go and do whatever they would do. If you can’t predict
what’s going to happen in the novel when reading it, it’s because I didn’t know
either. </div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
‘As I look back over my short
stories I see that they tend to come in threes and sometimes the three are
spread out over several years because I keep returning to subjects because I
haven’t worked them out yet. Usually by the third time that’s the end of it. <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Shadowman</b> features Jack Martin for the
second time, so although I may think I’ve finished with him for the moment, I
expect that another story will come along at some point.’</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
Etchison’s next two novels to be
published by Raven are <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">California Gothic</b>
and <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Double Edge</b>, and he is currently
developing an original <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Evil Dead</b>
novel with Sam Raimi, the director of the cult horror films.</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify;">
‘It’s like a film that never was
and the only way I would do it was if I had complete freedom to create a new
story. I met with Sam and his people and they’ve pretty much given me <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">carte blanche</i> although I’m continuing to
tell them my ideas to be sure I’m not going off in the wrong direction. Are you
aware that <b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">The Evil Dead</b> had a
different ending in America than it did in the rest of the world? I saw both
versions and they are entirely different, and I have to somehow reconcile both
of those endings, I feel responsible. The end of the third film, or at least
the American ending, makes it very clear to me that these adventures that Ash
has been having are fantasies in his mind. In the American ending he returns,
not to a bleak, post-Apocalypse world of the future, but to the store where he
works and you see that he’s just a nerdy clerk who tells these stories to the
people around him. He shifts between two realities: what’s in his mind and
what’s going on around him, and that’s the tack that I’m taking.’</div>
<br />Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-40920382115195117122018-05-01T08:35:00.001+01:002018-05-01T08:36:22.318+01:00Chasing the Wulf - Steve HarrisCHASING THE WULF<br />
STEVE HARRIS<br />
Interview by David Howe<br />
<br />
I cited Steve Harris as ‘a name to watch for the ‘90s’ following the release of his debut novel, <i>Adventureland</i>, and he has consolidated that position with his second novel, <i>Wulf</i>, now available in paperback.<br />
<br />
Steve hails from Basingstoke in the south of England, and I met up with him recently for lunch and a chat about his current and future plans. No sooner had we settled down with a large plate of sandwiches and a bottle of fizzy wine than Steve proclaimed: ‘I love interviews! I love the way you can find out stuff for books by going up to complete strangers and asking them the most absurd questions. When I was writing <i>Wulf</i>, I wanted to find out what would happen if you tried to kill someone with a combine harvester, so I wrote to a manufacturing company and asked if anyone there could tell me what would happen and in what sequence. I ended up talking to one of their sales directors and he was really helpful, told me what would happen and gave me lots of leaflets.<br />
<br />
‘I also went to a police station and asked what would happen if someone sawed down a tree and blocked off a village, sat up on the tree with a high-powered deer rifle and took shots at people, maybe a village bobby was killed as well - with a chainsaw! They looked at me a bit suspiciously at first but eventually they told me all sorts of things; I thought they’d politely ask me to leave, but they explained that if someone did do what I had outlined, they’d probably send out an Instant Response Unit, which is a couple of guys in a car and in the boot they’ve got a locked safe containing a rifle, which they can use if they think the situation needs it. They even went and asked the Chief Constable what size bullets they used for these rifles, detail like that was really helpful.’<br />
<br />
Steve had to pause to munch on his chicken, grape and lemon mayonnaise sandwich so I took the opportunity to ask if he had done much research for his next novel, <i>The Hoodoo Man</i>.<br />
<br />
‘Not really. I did do quite a lot for <i>Wulf</i>, but I didn’t really do any for <i>The Hoodoo Man</i> as far as going and actually talking to people. I had read a lot previously about out of body experiences and so on and also some of those quasi-religious books which purport to explain life, the universe and everything else you can possibly think of. I liked the way that their explanations and advice all hang together: basic common sense really.<br />
<br />
‘That’s part of the basis for <i>The Hoodoo Man </i>and another aspect is to do with changing the future, but not in a time-travel sense. If you can see into the future, and you’re seeing say one future out of three, then perhaps if you’re clever enough you can make one of the other two futures happen. You may be able to manipulate what happens in the future by something you do now, simply by having that knowledge. For example, if you look into the future and see that you’re going to fall under a bus the next day, then you obviously wouldn’t go anywhere near a bus and the future you saw would not happen. I wanted to look quite closely at how things like that might happen and what the consequences might be. There’s no such thing as a free lunch, nothing’s simple or easy.<br />
<br />
‘There are situations in <i>The Hoodoo Man</i> that are not terribly pleasant for the main character. I won’t tell you too much about it, but he finds himself faced with an impossible dilemma at one point, by being able to see into the future, and what he has to do to deal with it.’<br />
<br />
While Steve ploughed into the tuna mayonnaise sandwiches, I asked what made him start writing in the first place.<br />
<br />
‘Basically I was after a free lunch! I’d only ever written a couple of very short, one page, silly pieces of fiction, rather influenced by Spike Milligan I suppose, that kind of daftness, which I admire. And I’d also been playing in a band from my late teens to mid-twenties and writing some of the songs, which is very very difficult to do. I wanted to do something creative, something that might end up in me not having to go to work. This was because when I left school I was on the dole for six months or so, because there weren’t any jobs, and I eventually started working in an ammunition depot taking apart shells and stuff. The week after I started the job, I decided that the sooner I could do something I liked doing and not have to go to work, the better. This was why I took up with the band as it looked like a way out of having to go to work but it was dreadful, it was worse than having two jobs!<br />
<br />
‘Anyway, the band eventually fell apart and I decided to write a book as I thought it would probably be easier! So I sat down with a large exercise book and a biro and wrote my first novel. I didn’t write it seriously at first, I just wrote when I could and built it up gradually. Then I was off sick for nearly two months with glandular fever, and towards the end of that I started feeling a bit better so I got the book out again and finished the manuscript. It was a real hand-written manuscript, not a typescript, so I asked people how much they would charge to type it, and after I found out how much they wanted, I bought myself an electric typewriter and taught myself to type. This wasn’t <i>Adventureland</i> and I won’t embarrass myself by telling you the title of it. I thought it was a fairly good kind of horror thriller thing, and in fact I think I’ve read worse since, but nobody was the faintest bit interested. Headline didn’t exist then, nobody was doing horror, there was nothing about - this was around 1979. There was the odd Guy N Smith book, but nobody was interested in publishing any fresh horror at all. I even tried some American publishers and they weren’t interested either. So, unperturbed, I started on another book.<br />
<br />
‘Three novels and a volume of short stories later, I wrote <i>Adventureland</i>. By this time I knew the names of some of the people who had thought favourably of my previous stuff, and I sent <i>Adventureland</i> to them. One of them was Richard Evans, who was then at Futura. What I didn’t know was that he had left, and that someone else was there. I eventually got a note from Richard who was now at Headline saying that they would buy the book. He invited me up to talk about it and when I arrived he said ‘I’ve got some news for you which you’re not going to like very much’, so I said ‘What’s that then?’ and he said ‘I’m leaving!’. Luckily he was able to get the book through before he left.<br />
<br />
‘<i>Adventureland</i> seemed to be very well received, and by then I was well into the next one, <i>Wulf</i>. <i>Wulf</i> started when I was driving along one day and there was this thing about BSE - mad cow disease - on the radio. There was a woman who had worked with people who had died from a brain disease called kuru, prevalent in the natives of New Guinea who ate the brains of their dead. No-one knew what it was, how it got there, where it came from or how to get rid of it. They were saying that it was closely related to scrapies, which is a brain disease in sheep, and that cow feed is made from dead sheep, the cows contracted BSE and then the meat from them went into meat pies for human consumption. All the experts on the radio said that humans could not get it, except for this one woman who said they could, citing the New Guinea natives as an example.<br />
<br />
‘So I thought it would be good fun to give a whole village BSE. One of the symptoms in cows is that they become terrified - not that it takes much to frighten a cow anyway - and I wondered what they were frightened of. If they were hallucinating, what were they seeing? I thought it might be some sort of race memory of wolves, so that’s where the wolf idea came in. I basically decided to do a werewolf novel that didn’t involve any werewolves and progressed from there. I think I must be lucky as the whole process of writing seems to come really easily to me, it’s hardly ever a chore.<br />
<br />
‘The greatest love of my life is sleeping, sex is next and third is writing. Those are the only things that I’d rather be doing than writing - except talking to you of course!’<br />
<br />
And with that, the remaining sandwiches were devoured, the wine quaffed and Steve and I made our respective ways home. It was back to work for me, but I suspect that Steve had some serious sleeping to catch up on.Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2262113044581430424.post-65566816154348810152013-06-08T11:01:00.002+01:002013-06-08T11:01:30.747+01:00Bob Keen InterviewBOB KEEN HELLRAISER INTERVIEW, 8/2/95<br />
<br />
<em>This is an example of a transcription before I write up the interview for publication. Elements of this piece are probably elsewhere, in a longer piece about the films ... but this is an interesting chat with Bob Keen, presented with mis-spellings and question marks where I wasn't sure what he had said - all things cleaned up and sorted out for the final version. DJH</em><br />
<br />
<br />
DJH: We’ll start with <em>Hellraiser I</em>, how did you become involved with it?<br />
<br />
BK: Somebody reccomended me after I’d done <em>Highlander</em>. Clive was going to go with the people who did <em>Rawhead Rex</em> but he wasn’t overhappy with them. I got to meet him in the Ritz in London, and Chris Seaton [?] was there as well, and we hit it off. We were as sick as each other; I hadn’t actually read, at the time, I must confess, any of his stuff, I wasn’t aware of who he was but at the time he’d only released the <em>Books of Blood</em>. I immediately went out and read them and really got into his work. We then met again at his house which at the time was in Hampstead and we found that we really could, we had a common ground and could work with each other, and our imaginations really bounced [?] each other, that’s where the basis of our relationship and still our relationship to this day, probably our strongest point is the fact that our imaginations are very easily intertwined.<br />
<br />
DJH: Clive does give a lot of input into his films.<br />
<br />
CB: Bigger and better than any other director I can think of that I’ve worked with. That’s not to say that any other director I’ve worked with hasn’t been imaginative, it’s just really to say that Clive’s imagination is out on his sleeve. He’s an artist so he can draw, he can articulate as well, he’s incredibly good at describing something and it really becomes like mental ping-pong, you bat the idea over and it’s batted back very fast and you have to bat it back, and he’s one of these people that you have to run to keep up with. He’s incredible, his imagination; I thought I had a good imagination until [I met him ?]. He’s a joy to work with as well.<br />
<br />
DJH: The first <em>Hellraiser</em> film was obviously very much setting the scene. Were you in charge of all of it?<br />
<br />
BK: It was the whole look of the thing we were interested in and Clive had a lot of that, he had a feel that he wanted, and I think the chains, the lights and the slits and all that kind of stuff grew out of concepts and conversations. In fact, Pinhead’s design grew out of a very interesting conversation. We started off with something that was much more similar to Shinashasi [?] in design, where it was quills and it was very quill-like in design, and it sort of honed down to being simpler. So what happened is we started off with a grid, drawing a grid onto the head and Clive looked at that and went God, that’s it, that’s it! So the grid then became self-imposed markings and the quills got replaced with the nails or the pins. So eighty per cent of what Pinhead is is Clive’s imagination and I think fifteen per cent is what Doug brought to the table and I think five per cent is what we stuck on top of his face. I think an awful lot of Pinhead’s charm, beauty is in Doug’s voice, performance and I think the look is something that Clive had, he saw one we [?] unfold in front of him, it was a joy for him to see that creation come along.<br />
<br />
DJH: You’ve got a sketch there, is this an along the way one?<br />
<br />
BK: It’s along the way. Clive’s greatest gift I think is the fact that he can see something and instantly know in which direction he wants it to go. The original concept was not like that, it was much more quill-like but he instantly steered it towards that. We were working out for ourselves, in fact that is it, that was the first one, and I think he could see that the self-imposed almost discipline that someone would have to have to sit there and produce this shape was much more appealing, and also he had a great phrase on the film, and that was less is more, and I think that’s very true. It would have been very easy to have put in lots of folds, do the normal monster stuff, but it isn’t, it’s a very simplistic, the colour is very simple, I think that’s why it’s such a striking image that has lasted so long. It’s still on every single poster for a <em>Hellraiser</em> film. It is the image of the pictures.<br />
<br />
DJH: The film evolved conceptually, is that the right term? You were doing the visual effects but from the way you talk it’s almost as if you were doing the art direction and the lighting…<br />
<br />
BK: I think it was, there was an awful lot of what I like to call pizza and beer conversations where the two of us or sometimes there would be four of us from the group all sitting down and just talking constantly and talking the thing through, I think that was useful for Clive to use us as a sounding board and like I say mental ping-pong table it would be knocked over and knocked back. And there are some aspects of it which were my idea, there are a lot of aspects which were Clive’s idea and there were some aspects of it which were other people on the team’s idea. Again I think it’s Clive’s ability to a) interpret what you’re saying to him and then see how he wants that to run; probably his immense imagination is his true genius.<br />
<br />
DJH: How was the original Pinhead done? Because I believe it’s changed slightly with each film.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, only very slightly. On the first film we thought we were going to have major problems holding all these pins out right and perfectly straight So what we did is we built, a really laborious process, we had a little tiny piece of brass with a little tiny piece of rubber underneath so it wouldn’t mark Doug’s face, and that was pushed through, on top of the brass there was a pin, and it was pushed through, then each and every pin on the first film was actually a hollow piece of brass with a head made to look like a nail, so they were very light, and they would then sit [fit?] over the pin going through. That’s the main difference, also the number of prosthetic pieces, the first film had probably about five pieces at least to make, which took a long time. We also pre-coloured to an extent but nowhere as much as by the time we did III and IV when the pieces were very pre-coloured.<br />
<br />
DJH: So there was make-up that had to go on on top?<br />
<br />
BK: Natural pigments, yeah. They were base coloured, but it was taking something like four hours to make you up. By the time we got to the second feature. For the first picture it didn’t matter so much, I think Doug’s days were quite few.<br />
<br />
DJH: I think Gary said he was only on screen for about six minutes in the entire film.<br />
<br />
BK: That’s exactly it, so the actual days was quite a short number, and really the story was about, it’s interesting that Pinhead emerged out of that because really the story initially was a love story, what someone will do for love. And the real monster was Julie, that she would do anything for love, or not depending on how you look at it. But I think that sort of evolved and I think the fans really latched onto Pinhead, in fact the whole Cenobite culture, much stronger than we probably intended them to. But that’s the way it goes, you can never tell what’s going to happen.<br />
<br />
DJH: Because the whole concept of the Cenobites is the boundary between pleasure and pain.<br />
<br />
BK: That was always said, that was always something we knew we were getting into with <em>Hellraiser</em>, that was there even in the first draft of the script. I think we always knew you were putting fingers into stuff that up until that time had not been touched in mainstream cinema.<br />
<br />
DJH: More so that Pinhead, Pinhead looks very serene, almost regal…<br />
<br />
BK: I always thought of him as at least a general.<br />
<br />
DJH: I mean there’s no sense that he’s in any particular discomfort…<br />
<br />
BK: Apart form having the strips torn out of his stomach…<br />
<br />
DJH: I mean in terms of his bearing; but when you come to something like Chatterer…<br />
<br />
BK: Chatterer wasn’t called Chatterer for a long time. Before he was actually named Chatterer he was known as Poor Bastard, and that probably was a better name for him. As a character, having your eyelids sewn up and pulled over and having your gums revealed and your head scraped [?] is probably not the most pleasant of things in the world. He seems so happy with it, you know. It’s very difficult to understand.<br />
<br />
DJH: The pleasure through pain stuff was presumably influencing the design of this sort of thing.<br />
<br />
BK: I think once we’d hit on the demons and the whole pain or pleasure concept that it really became very clear. I’ve said this before but I could probably sit here and design Cenobites for another ten years because the variation on a theme does become, you know what is a Cenobite and what is someone who is not a Cenobite. I think that’s a very interesting line, I think that’s also to do with purity of image. We were very, very careful about costume, about colouring, about all the aspects of all the Cenobites to start off with and that gave us a very strong look, it’s very stylised.<br />
<br />
DJH: It’s almost ritual striation, there’s nothing random here, it’s all planned…<br />
<br />
BK: That’s exactly it and I think that’s what we were looking for in our monsters, that we were looking for this strange ornament [aura], of almost like I said self-imposed discipline to it. Against that you’ve got the strange decayed order of the rebuilding of Frank which is something completely different.<br />
<br />
DJH: I want to talk about the other elements and the strongest one is Frank. It is still extraordinary, the rebirth of Frank out of the floorboards.<br />
<br />
BK: The birth is a very interesting thing. What happened with the birth was, we’d already shot if you like a dry version which was Frank’s remains breaking out of the wall.<br />
<br />
DJH: You mean dry as in dust?<br />
<br />
BK: Dust, all that sort of thing. And when New World saw the picture they realised that the potential for this film was a lot bigger than they originally planned. I think that no-one had realised or no-one believed that the concept was going to be as powerful. We knew it was special. So at the end of the picture they decided to flex in some more money. So the birth of Frank was actually done in a different studio to the rest of the film, on a different set because they’d already pulled down the set, afterwards we went back and did the birth of Frank. That was really a great opportunity for me to run with something. Clive said, a couple of paragraphs about making it visceral and I was allowed to really come up with the goods then. That was the great opportunity and we then bounced, I storyboarded that concept, which was very close to what we had, bounced around a few ideas, added a few things in and then we went for it in a big way. It was very gooey [?], we were using a lot of melt down effects and tons and tons of slime, you wouldn’t believe how much slime. What people don’t realise is that the holes in the floor, the way the set was built, meant that our slime was constantly running over all the operators underneath. Underneath the table you were sitting there with, <br />
<br />
DJH: It was like a puppet stage almost?<br />
<br />
BK: Exactly, it was a raised set and there were people underneath and no matter what you wore, all day long the slime would trickle down and it would get down your neck and down the back of your trousers, it was fairly gross to be underneath it. That really gave us, that imagery then gave us that strong start to Frank and I think that was a great creational moment.<br />
<br />
DJH: Was it a rod puppet?<br />
<br />
BK: It was a lot of different techniques. There was rod puppetry for sure for some of the arms stuff, table work for the fingers, there was radio control for the head…<br />
<br />
DJH: I know it’s all in reverse but where the spinal column thrusts itself into the brain pan as it appeared on the floor.<br />
<br />
BK: All of that stuff was, there was a lot more in fact shot, there’s a really weird sequence where these eyes merge out of the brain and solidify and stuff like that and there’s flesh running up the arms and all the rest of it. There’s only so much, if you actually look at it I think it’s as tight as you ever could want it as far as effects are concerned and if it gets any longer people will start losing interest so it was right to cut that.<br />
<br />
DJH: How long did it take to do all that? How much time did they give you?<br />
<br />
BK: Not enough, as I remember it was about four weeks to get everything together for that, which was very, very tight.<br />
<br />
DJH: That sounds quite generous actually in film terms. Four weeks to do just one effect?!<br />
<br />
BK: It wasn’t just one effect. There was an awful lot of other effects as well that were done at that time.<br />
<br />
DJH: So it was a general beefing up but that was the main sequence?<br />
<br />
BK: That was the main thing that they beefed up and there was several things with the boxed, doing more stuff. It was about half as much work again as we’d done on the picture so it was a lot of work, a lot of bits and pieces. It paid off, because there are moments I think everyone remembers. Everybody who’s seen <em>Hellraiser</em> remembers Frank and that’s a very good moment. Then after that we then realised that Frank needed to go through much more stages than we’d originally planned. We’d originally planned three make-up stages which went as I saw it, went from raw meat through to an underskeleton with flesh and bones. The process enlarged by the fact that we knew we’d seen the birth of Frank and then story-wise, just after that, we were going to see him crawling around. We actually had a child actor who was brilliant, in a miniature suit crawling around so we could get some idea of a feeling of growth of him. All the original mechanical stuff that was done with a puppet was all scrapped at that point, so there was a big chunk of work taken out as well, and then Frank sort of grew out of that, I mean his flesh, One of my proudest moments is where he’s still not dressed and the flesh is just, you really do feel<br />
<br />
DJH: Just hanging off the bones almost.<br />
<br />
BK: Yeah. A lot of it helped by the fact that…<br />
<br />
DJH: Is this a puppet? How is he in there?<br />
<br />
BK: No this is the real [actor]. The guy playing it, Oliver Smith, was thin to the point of [emaciation], this guy was a walking bag of bones, he still is. And consequently was great because you could put prosthetics all over him and it would build up and you would still feel that depth. It’s about an inch and a half [away from his chest], a lot of it is done with colour as well. There’s an awful lot of painting the darkness in but I feel very strongly that Frank was probably one of the best things we’ve done. It still stands up to this day. It’s a head to toe job. It is a full body suit with prosthetics on hand and head.<br />
<br />
DJH: Did you see blood running through veins?<br />
<br />
BK: You see goo moving. What we would do was just before the take we made this goo up which had like two or three different colours in it, stranded, and then we’d plonk a load of this onto the top of his head and then you’d see that move down all the time so you’ve got this constant feeling that the flesh is still moving, the flesh is still creeping and that’s the effect we were all after.<br />
<br />
DJH: I think the final thing was this thing, this strange thing that suddenly appears out of nowhere.<br />
<br />
BK: The Engineer. We wanted <em>Hellraiser</em> to be the ultimate thrill ride. The Engineer wasn’t in the original script and I think we wanted an opportunity to do a big creature and Clive was up for that and we felt that Hell could have other things in it and other creatures. I think it was a great opportunity for us to do a creature and it was a great opportunity for Clive to have another big scare, so it kind of grew.<br />
<br />
DJH: There’s a big chase sequence in the middle where she’s after the box..<br />
<br />
BK: She opens the box; it gave a good narrative to the film. I could have missed the Engineer I must admit, I wish that maybe on <em>Hellraiser</em> III and IV we had had a chance to do other creatures in Hell, it would have been nice.<br />
<br />
DJH: So presumably when you did all this there wasn’t any particular thought of there being any sequels.<br />
<br />
BK: I don’t think you ever sit there and work on a film and think well there’s going to be four sequels, it’s the start of a huge franchise. What we did know is that we were doing something special. I think we were all convinced that it wouldn’t be popular because we thought it was so different and I think that included Clive. We none of us knew that it was going to be as popular.<br />
<br />
DJH: Or that it was going to be the horror icon of the eighties.<br />
<br />
BK: Exactly, I don’t think any of us were aware of that. Probably that image has stalked Clive a little bit more than it has stalked us and I think he still feels fairly stalked by that image. He just recently did an interview where his main line was if there was never another <em>Hellraiser</em> film made I wouldn’t be an unhappy man, I think that’s probably the truth and I understand that. There’s an awful lot more to Clive than <em>Hellraiser</em>.<br />
<br />
DJH: So <em>Hellbound</em>: <em>Hellraiser</em> II seemed to come round fairly quickly.<br />
<br />
BK: I think what happened, obviously New Line realised they had a huge hit and consequently they thought let’s do another one and let’s go into Hell. I think it was remarkably quick. The film came out and within months we were actually in production and the schedule for it was nightmarishly difficult, very difficult indeed.<br />
<br />
DJH: This is far more of a sequel than the others in the series.… this one is really picking up from the first film.<br />
<br />
BK: Same characters; it’s to do with the fact that there are set characters that come over from the first picture into the second picture. I think there is a link with he third and fourth film but certainly by the time the fourth film comes round it’s a less obvious link. The third film does have elements and we find out more about who the character Pinhead was and stuff like that.<br />
<br />
DJH: I’ve read somewhere the comment that they've become successively more Pinhead orientated.<br />
<br />
BK: I think that’s obviously down to what the fans want. It’s a sort of direct statement.<br />
<br />
DJH: For the second film we've got a skinless Julia.<br />
<br />
BK: I think that was a continuation of a tradition. I’d hoped that we’d carry on doing that tradition down the line, a whole skinless family or a skinless horse or something like that. Julia was obviously a progression from what Frank was. We also wanted to make her very sexy and making her come over in such a way that she still is appealing but has no skin is obviously a challenge and a half and in fact it meant taking what was real and throwing it away. Because what was real with Frank worked.<br />
<br />
DJH: Real in the sense that if you take a body apart that is the sort of thing you would see.<br />
<br />
BK: You’d be pretty damn close. If you took the skin off someone like Julia it just really wouldn’t be the same thing. At least on number three you got to see how he does it! So it’s an interesting process. Julia was just an extension of what we’d learnt from Frank and then trying to keep the sexy aspect.<br />
<br />
DJH: Again it’s a full suit?<br />
<br />
BK: Full body suit. [It was another actress], The same as with Frank, it was easier to find somebody who was very thin, a dancer in fact [and then build up]. Little John did a superb job with the colour and painting and all of that, it’s a lovely job.<br />
<br />
DJH: You can see here it’s all very slimy but presumably the colour is all there first.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, it’s very rich before the slime goes on. You have to be careful as well that you don’t lose everything, that it doesn’t become a red blob. We’d done a lot of research on colour tones and we were using a lot of pure black, although it doesn’t read as pure black, and pure white for highlighting. By the time you’ve put the bloody slime over the top, everything was mutated down. You need something that will kick through that.<br />
<br />
DJH: Then there’s Channard of course.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, old Cheesegrater Face.<br />
<br />
DJH: He was the first one we saw being made.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, I think he’s the most disappointing for me. We never really got a chance to go back as in detail to see a Cenobite being made and I think I would have liked to have gone back and work with Channard a little bit more.<br />
<br />
DJH: I was never quite sure what this thing was supposed to be.<br />
<br />
BK: I think it’s a giant prick that happens to be stuck into his head, I thought that was fairly obvious! I think Channard, it’s an interesting image.<br />
<br />
DJH: Going into the internal logic of these things and talking about the first film being driven by this pleasure/pain barrier, then you come into the second film and I think in context there’s not much doubt that Channard is all but a Cenobite in person, he’s not a very nice person, he relishes this aspect of it.<br />
<br />
BK: I think it’s a fascination for him, a fascination that has plagued his life since childhood. He’s collecting the boxes, the human brain and the whole fascination with the insides as well as the outsides.<br />
<br />
DJH: So how much did this thematic aspect have on developing the look of Channard?<br />
<br />
BK: None. Channard’s design was actually done as an alternative Cenobite design for the first film and when we came to do the second film, we picked up the two hundred drawings we had from the first film and looked through and found, and thought Ooh look, Cheesegrater, that’ll be great, and went with that. I think Channard could have done with a little bit more thought and a little bit more level that could have been placed on it. I think the imagery isn’t as pure as some of the other imagery. But it does have people wincing still.<br />
<br />
DJH: Looking at the Cenobites in the first film and in some of the other films, you can see how people would say I’d quite like to be Pinhead…<br />
<br />
BK: I’ve never actually thought that but it’s an interesting idea!<br />
<br />
DJH: Neither have I, but I know some people do. But why would anyone want to have a cheesegrater slammed over their face?<br />
<br />
BK: Maybe that’s my problem with it, I can’t actually put my finger on what’s wrong with Channard; It’s obviously about the constraints of bondage, it’s all to do with the freedom of constraint and everything else and my problem I think is… maybe it’s the fact we see Channard being made in front of us that it takes some of that magic away.<br />
<br />
DJH: But you see Pinhead as well in three, and it doesn’t take it away.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes you do; maybe that’s because you’ve already seen Pinhead and you already know Pinhead and you’re going back to the creation of Pinhead.<br />
<br />
DJH: If you take it back again - you see pierced ears, no problem with that, most people have got pierced ears. You get pierced ears all the way round, you get people now with pierced noses, pierced eyebrows, nipples, belly buttons. The Cenobite type thing is almost an extension of this. It’s saying what can I do to my body that is going to be attractive?<br />
<br />
BK: I think it’s exactly that, and individual. I think a very important point is the individuality of what people are willing to go through and put themselves up for.<br />
<br />
DJH: And you show it with pride.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, I’ve changed my body, I’m no longer a human as you can see them.<br />
<br />
DJH: And again I find that hard to apply to Channard.<br />
<br />
BK: I think that’s probably true.<br />
<br />
DJH: He didn’t change his body, it was done for him, he had no say in this.<br />
<br />
BK: I think you’re absolutely right, that is some of the problem with Channard. But you work on these things and you work through, it’s only insight afterwards that you can actually … Channard is a disappointment for me but for a lot of people he fulfilled what they were after.<br />
<br />
DJH: Frank was in the second film as well.<br />
<br />
BK: Yes, Frank was back.<br />
<br />
DJH: This was obviously a new costume.<br />
<br />
BK: At the end of the day they’re pretty much hanging around, nearly everything was new for the second film.<br />
<br />
DJH: Coming back to Pinhead again, how did this then change?<br />
<br />
BK: Just the number of pieces was reduced, the technique was still the same by the second film, [the plates with the pins pushed through], that was still the same. What we did was reduce the number of pieces down to three, I believe. That speeded the process up drastically. We had to speed it up even further by the time we got to three, being on for even more number of days, he was suffering even more. It’s just how far can you go with this.<br />
<br />
DJH: The female one.<br />
<br />
BK: Right. Which was actually in the first film and reprised in the second one. She’s a very elegant creature, the female Cenobite. This idea that she has this piece of metal which runs through her face and it opens the wound and keeps the wound open in her throat, is much more in keeping with that special individuality maybe than I think Channard is. Technically it was an interesting one. To get the wire running through the face we went up and round the top of the head, so she had a piece of metal that went up and round the top of her head [following the line of the skull], and we connect to that the wires that link up through. She’s a very elegant beast and shows again that purity of image.<br />
<br />
DJH: This is carried forward to the fourth film with Anglique.<br />
<br />
BK: The same idea, but slightly different. You know that Angelique is a Cenobite when you look at a photograph, you don’t need to know which film she’s from. But I think that’s why I’m talking about purity of image.<br />
<br />
DJH: Butterball was the other one.<br />
<br />
BK: Or Fat Bastard… Sad Bastard and Fat Bastard as they were known. Butterball was an interesting idea, he’s almost baby-like in his grossness and the idea that they’d sewn his eyes up and filed his teeth down didn’t seem to make a great deal of problems for him. A very popular image, for us a very simple one, an overhead mask, as was Chatterer. Very quick to apply. Necessity slightly drove the machine on the first one. With the female Cenobite and Pinhead being prosthetics, we knew we wouldn’t have enough time or enough crew to have the others as prosthetics so they were overhead masks.<br />
<br />
DJH: They’ve all got mutilated flesh type bits in the costume, are they literally part of the costume?<br />
<br />
BK: Yes they are. That’s practically the only way of doing it because of the time factor. Having so many on the screen at the same time. So all this is part of the costume. It did mean at the end of the day we ended up having to clean everything for a good hour, two hours after the make-up had come off to make sure everything was clean because that was the same piece you were going to use the next day. You had to take a lot more care of something than if we were throwing it away.<br />
<br />
David J Howe<br />
8/2/95Davidhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13752147546933122889noreply@blogger.com