BOOK REVIEW - THE RITUAL BY ADAM NEVILL

 

There was a time, more years ago than I care to mention, when I read nothing but horror novels. I knew who the King was and I devoured page after page of his rambling prose, I was in love with the works of James Herbert, fascinated and often sickened by the splatter-punks. I would squeeze in a short story from the Pan Books between novels and I explored the likes of Koontz, Barker, Laymon, Lumley and others.

 I became personal friends with several dark scribes and even had one horror author (Steve Harris) come visit and stay several days while we drank whisky and talked genre history - a journey that took us from Stoker and Poe via Jackson, Lovecraft and down that dark winding road  to Stephen King and of course there was  a little Guy N. Smith thrown in for good measure.  Eclectic blood soaked days, indeed.

That was then though but these days apart from the odd Stephen King, and he's long broadened out from basic horror, I've not really explored the genre. So I'm not sure how I stumbled across The Ritual by Adam Nevill but I did, and all I can say is WOW! This is a brilliant read that showed me that not only was the genre alive and well but it remains as much fun as its always been.

It was the plot of the book - several city slicker friends out of their depths in the Scandinavian wilderness - which appealed because I am a great fan of nordic noir, and that particular sub-genre often skirts around the borderline of what we would call horror fiction.Of course the fact that the author's gained much praise from critics, even being called the British Stephen King also intrigued me.

After a few pages I was hooked and picked up the book at every opportunity - it starts off by exploring the fractured relationships between the four lifelong friends, before they take a wrong turning and become lost in an ancient forest where they are stalked by some sort of creature that may be as old as time itself. Throw in Viking legends, a death metal combo. the old Gods and a group of hillbillies that seem to have been spawned from a mating between Deliverance and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Oh, and let's not forget that pitiful old woman who just may be the creepiest character in the entire book.

The author does an excellent job of creating atmosphere and the tension is handled so well that the pages just fly by, as the reader becomes engrossed in the well constructed and expertly handled story. Things do get gruesome in places but there is a lot of black humour that is positioned in such a way as to allow the reader to go with the more ridiculous sections of the narrative.

To sum up then this is a powerhouse of a horror novel - often terrific and never silly. That's quite an accomplishment.

Creature Features

 When James Herbert published The Rats in 1974 not only did he have a worldwide best-seller on his hands but he also invented a horror fiction subgenre - let's call it Creature-thrillers as a nod to the 1950's/1960's Creature Feature movies.


Herbert said he thought of the story after watching Todd Browning's Dracula on the television and being horrified by Renfield's description of his nightmare involving hordes of rats. The author also recalled the packs of rats he had seen on London's old bomb sites during his childhood and he brought the feelings of dread the creatures had always inspired in himself to his first novel.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time, I was as naive as that." James Herbert, talking about writing The Rats.

The book met with a poor critical reception but the first print run sold out within three weeks and the book's remained in print ever since. For many the book was too graphic and the overall theme too pessimistic but what Herbert did was bring a particular working class form of horror to the table and there was a theme of criticism of a government who were not doing enough for the poorer elements of society.  It's written in a very visceral style and totally enjoyable but it's so much more than it appears on the surface. And of course the true measure of its success is in the amount of imitations it spawned.



Herbert was very much in the right place and at the right time and almost simultaneously with The Rats, an American writer named Stephen King was getting his first taste of success with Carrie - all of a sudden the horror genre was big business. And of course The Rats was riding on this wave of  popularity - there were a slew of imitators - Maggots, Snakes, Cats, Worms, Bats, alligators, frogs and even absurdly Slugs all turned feral and went for the human population.



Guy N. Smith's Crab series was one of the first to cash in on the success of  Herbert's rodents with Night of the Crabs and in all he wrote six Crabs books but unlike many of the Herbert imitators these books were actually quite good in their own right. Indeed the series still has a cult following and in 2009 the first book was reissued in a deluxe hardcover edition. Guy runs his own book business, Black Hill Books and many of his titles can be bought there and it also carries an extensive range of classic paperbacks in all genres.



Smith would go on to write many more creature thrillers featuring Bats, snaked, alligators and even a variety of creatures in the vastly entertaining, The Abomination but by far his most popular series was and remains, The Crabs.

Another entertaining creature thriller was Spiders by Richard Lewis which actually spawned a sequel, The Web. I read both of these books many years ago and remember enjoying them both immensely and whilst I don't know what I'd think of them these days I do have fond memories of them.

The reason for these animals going feral was usually some ecological disaster or scientific experiment, although there were one or two examples where the reason was supernatural but for the most part it was bizarre scientific experiments that provoked the horror. In fact, off the top of my head, I can't really remember any of the books where the reason for the crazed creature outbreak was supernatural.



Eventually the creature thrillers fell out of favour and horror readers went for more sophisticated novels but the genre was reinvented briefly in the 90's when Shaun Hutson wrote perhaps the most stomach churning series of all, Slugs.This time there was no holds barred and there is even a scene where a guy is sitting on the toilet and one of the killer slugs goes up his arse.

But back to the originator of this little horror sub-genre, James Herbert - there were three follow ups to The Rats. Lair was a great second story and the third book, Domain took up the story of the mutated rodents in the aftermath of a nuclear war and although this is a good premise the book was not as successful in terms of story as the previous two.  It sold by the truck-load, though.



These books made up a trilogy but there was another story with the graphic novel, The City which is again set in London after a nuclear war. Though when people talk about the Rats trilogy they mean the three novels proper with the graphic novel considered something of a companion piece.

This article gives just a taster of all the creature thrillers out there - go on give one a try but beware one thing they all share in common is their extremely graphic scenes.



A strong stomach is advised.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

COMING SOON

THE FLOCK

 

The Sickest Writer on the planet - Shaun Hutson interview

Shaun Hutson has always bucked the system - he's still doing it. After being expelled from school he fell into a number of jobs, none he could hold for too long - shop assistant, cinema usher and a barman. Indeed if he hadn't taken the plunge and become a full time author in 1983 then Shaun would probably still be on that treadmill of job after job. He's writtern in every genre imaginable westerns, war, crime and he's still bucking the system and where most of his contemporaries from the horror boom period of the 80's have vanished he's still here, alive and kicking and selling books.

Biographical details are scarce but there is some information on Shaun's official website.

According to Shaun's website.

He is a reformed alcoholic with diagnosed psychotic tendencies, is very unsociable and likes to shoot pistols for a hobby, he has appeared on stage with his rock band idols, Iron Maiden on numerous occasions, has received death threats in relation with his work, supports Liverpool and never misses a home game and a quote on one of his books once said, he (Shaun) has done for literature what Hitler did for Poland.

Before starting the interview Shaun was pleased to see I am published by Robert Hale and informed me that he started out with Hale many years ago.

" I used to be published Robert Hale (I’m sure I mentioned it). I did eleven war novels for them when I first started writing and will always have a soft spot for them as they published my first ever novel BLOOD AND HONOUR. Anyway, enough of that, on to your questions… "

AND SO THE TAINTED ARCHIVE IN CONVERSATION WITH SHAUN HUTSON - This interview was first posted in 2010



TA: I've often heard you called the sickest writer on the planet. How does this make you feel?




SH: I have no objection at all to being called the sickest writer on the planet, just as I never objected to the other nicknames like The Godfather of Gore, the Shakespeare of Gore and stuff like that. I suppose it’s better to be remembered as something. It depends on your definition of sick really. Writing horror all these years I suppose I’d have been more pissed off if people had labelled me “a really nice writer”. So, feel free to call me sick.




TA: You're sick - seriously you have survived the horror boom years of the 80's when so many of the other once familiar names have vanished. Why is this do you think?


SH: It’s just a pity those horror boom years ever went away. I’ve said it many times before and I’ll keep saying it but I think horror is a dead genre (it certainly is as far as publishers are concerned). Stuff like Twilight has been successful but it all seems to be vampires and werewolves. The shelves are covered with shit that looks like it was inspired by the Underworld films which were bad enough anyway. There’s no traditional horror being published anymore, not by big publishers anyway. They’re all too busy with crime and serial killers. It’s almost as if they’re saying “see we were right all those years ago to turn our noses up at horror.” Bastards. I haven’t a clue why I survived and some other authors fell by the wayside. Probably because my fan base is so loyal. My readers are different. A cut above the rest and they’ve always supported me no matter what I’ve done and I’m grateful for that.


TA: In recent years you seem to have branched out into crime. Do you prefer writing crime or horror?


SH: Lots of people have told me I’ve been writing crime but I can’t say as I’ve noticed. I just write my new book every year, I never think which category it’s going to fall into. I write about what interests me at the time, what grabs me as a writer. I never think about current trends or stuff like that. I just do what I want to do and hope that people will like it. That’s what I’ve always done. If I had any sense I’d be trying to write fucking detective novels or books about forensics and serial killers because that’s all publishers seem to want but I’ve never made that cross over into the thriller genre because bookshops are too intent on putting authors into their ready made categories. The book business is so regimented as far as defining authors goes. Once you write two books in one genre that’s you stuck there for all time in the eyes of the book business.

TA: One of your most successful books, Slugs was turned into a movie. It was dire and I've heard you've disowned it. Why?


SH:I don’t think I ever disowned SLUGS the movie but I always made sure that people knew I had fuck all to do with it. The thing is, when you sell film rights you know that what turns up on the screen is going to be nothing like what you originally wrote (unless you’re fucking J.K. Rowling) so you just accept it. Or you should. It makes me sick when I hear authors moaning about how bad adaptations of their books are. I just think, they paid you shit loads for the rights, shut the fuck up and enjoy it. Having said that, the company that made SLUGS didn’t even pay me enough to soften the blow but what can you do?


TA: During the Eighties you cut quite a flamboyant image for a writer, what with appearing on stage with rock icons, Iron Maiden. Are you still Maiden's biggest fan?



SH: I’m pretty sure that Iron Maiden have got lots of fans more devoted than me. I love their music though. I have since their very first album and getting the chance to meet them and work with them on and off over the years has been wonderful. We’re all about the same age and they’ve managed to survive all the trends that have come and gone, just doing what is so recognisably their style and I’d like to think that there are similarities between the two of us (apart from the fact that they’re multi-millionaires…) in as much as they’ve remained faithful to their audience and never sold out.


TA: When I was in my late teens, the Eighties again, shops were full to the rafters with horror novels but these days the genre is far less visible. Where do you see the future for horror?


SH: I’m not sure the horror genre has got a future to be honest. Not with big mainstream publishers. It’s weird because there are so many horror films at the cinema and yet, for the only time in my life as a writer, that trend hasn’t been adopted by the publishing business. Horror films appear by the dozen every year and yet the publishers still cut back on their horror and bookshops stock less and less of it. It’s very depressing. They obviously need more shelf space for all the crime novels and the truck loads of ghost written fucking celebrity books that now pollute our bookshops. When Jordan can have the number one selling novel and Chris Moyles autobiography is a best seller then you know how deep in the shit the book business is. And how bad a state society in general is in for that matter…but anyway…


TA: Writers you yourself admire?


SH: I don’t read fiction so I can’t really say. Well, not new fiction anyway. If I read new books then it’s non fiction but as for fiction, other than Thomas Harris, I can’t be bothered (as he only writes one every seven years it’s not too much of a stretch). I’ve just re-read LEGION by William Peter Blatty who was a wonderful writer and I’m reading a novel by Jim Thompson at the moment (written in about 1954, I think). I read Raymond Chandler sometimes and occasionally some older short stories but other than that I don’t read fiction unless it’s something that really leaps out at me, like something I notice in the review pages of the paper (I started reading a book called The Chatelet Apprentice around Christmas but never finished it) I never, if I can help it, go in bookshops either so most of the stuff that’s on my shelves is about seven or eight years old.




TA: Slugs is a total gross out novel, great fun and at the time it was published we had already been terrorised by rats, crabs, cats and seemingly every creature under the sun. What made you chose to write about slugs?



SH:To be honest, it wasn’t me who chose to write about Slugs. I wanted to do it about leeches (because of the vampire possibility too) and my agent of the time who’d read a novel I wrote called Deathday that featured a giant slug said why not do a novel all about slugs. I couldn’t see the mileage in it until I started researching and, happily, as usual he was proved right and I was wrong. The slugs novels were great fun to write and Slugs will always be very dear to my heart because it is the novel I’ll always be remembered for. I could win the Booker Prize (well, not really, I’m joking but you know what I mean) and I’d still be known at the bloke who wrote slugs but like I said before, it’s nice to be remembered for something. I’ve got nothing against them in real life by the way but I do find them pretty revolting. But so do lots of people. Maybe that was why the book worked.


TA: And finally will the mutated slugs ever return?


SH: I can’t imagine there’ll ever be another Slugs book. Not unless we could all get in a time machine and go back to the 80’s (not a bad idea…). It was always intended as a trilogy…(sorry..) but I can’t see the third one ever being done now, certainly not with the demise of the horror genre in general but I must admit, it would be nice to do it. I think I’ve still got the plot lying around somewhere….Or maybe I will get around to doing that one about leeches eventually…Actually, I wrote a scene in my new novel the other day about a guy having a nightmare about slugs…maybe it was an omen….


Watch this space as they say - The Tainted Archive thanks Shaun for his time.

Shaun's website can be found HERE

Remembering horror author, James Herbert

It may have been his ghoulish sense of humour, or then again it maybe just that it was just his favourite song, but when horror author James Herbert's coffin was carried into the church for his funeral, Here Comes the Sun by The Beatles was playing. John Lennon's, Working Class Hero would have been just as  appropriate because that's very much what Mr Herbert was. No matter how big the  riches that came his way, he remained to the end that same old East End boy.

The author had died at the relatively young age of 69, but he'd packed a lot into his years. From humble beginnings in London's East End with the Kray Twins counting amongst his neighbours, he came a long way. He had sold over 54 million books worldwide by the time the of his death, was awarded an OBE in 2010 and he left an estate totalling more than £8 million. His first book, The Rats published in 1974 sold out its first 100,000 copies in three weeks. Even now, several years after his death, his works remain in print and are strong sellers.

Herbert was one of the few British novelists to become a multi-millionaire from writing almost exclusively in the horror genre. Stephen King is the only horror writer who has exceeded Herbert’s total sales, but whereas King has received respect from the literary establishment, Herbert never did. King once described Herbert's first novel, The Rats as being like the Sex Pistols, Anarchy in the UK - And maybe King is right, maybe Herbert was too punk for the mainstream. He was adored by the reading public though, and that was enough for Herbert who was as unpretentious a man as one could meet.

“If The Rats, with its scenes of gruesome horror and its blasted East End landscape, is not a literary version of ‘Anarchy in the UK,’ what is?” Stephen King

I used to write to the author whenever he had a new book out, and I always got a letter back - you can't say the same about all of the authors  I've written to over the years. I never met Herbert personally but I did in the pre-Internet days correspond with him a few times a year. This started when I was a book obsessed teenager and it made me feel closer to the author's books. It also felt great to get a letter from such a literary superstar.

I guess Herbert would have known how I felt since as a boy, he was inspired by the American comic book Casey Ruggles, which he found on the market stalls in Petticoat Lane.

"That's where I learned to write. For a cowboy comic, it was incredible. The only time I wrote a fan letter in my life was to [its writer and artist] Warren Tufts and that was when I was 30. I rang up Hanna-Barbera because somebody told me he was working there as an animator and got his address, wrote a letter and got a cautious reply back."  James Herbert.

 That first letter  led to Herbert and Tufts becoming penpals.

“Enough to make a rodent retch, undeniably, and enough to make any human pitch the book aside.” Martin Amis reviewing The Rats

And so to cast aside pretension here, in true tabloid style, are some facts you may now know about James Herbert.

1. Herbert was afraid of the dark as a child, but his only fear in later life was of spiders.

2. He named his youngest daughter Casey, after his comic-book hero "Casey Ruggles", an 1850s Californian cowboy.

3. While never losing his own East End accent, he once commented that his brother John became a “very, very middle-class” broker for Lloyds.

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4. In 2010, he was made Grand Master of Horror by the World Horror Convention. He was presented the award by his friend Stephen King.

5. His favourite party trick was to challenge guests at his Sussex home to sit in two chairs that once belonged to satanist Aleister Crowley.


6. He would finish writing at 6 o’clock each evening in time to pour a large vodka and watch The Simpsons.


7. Fearing that the Krays may read his books in prison, Herbert’s mother once told him off for branding the brothers animals in his fiction. They were childhood neighbours.

8. He grew up around the corner from Petticoat Lane in Whitechapel, once a haunt of Jack the Ripper.

9. He "hit the roof" when his publishers printed his fourth novel Fluke in Times Roman typeface and ordered that it be reprinted in Palantin.

10. His mother arrived in London from Manchester aged 21. The first person she would meet after getting off the tube was his future father.

11. His first novel, Rats, published in 1974, features mutant man-eating rats take over London. It was inspired by the hordes of rats that would attack his parents’ supplies of fruit and vegetables.

12. Although the manuscript was rejected by five out of the six publishers that Herbert sent it to, the first 100 000 copies of Rats sold out within three weeks.

13. In the guise of “Henry Tilney”, Martin Amis was the first critic to review Rats (for the Observer). He was not impressed.

14. He wrote 23 novels which have been published in 34 languages including Russian and Chinese. He has sold over 54m copies worldwide.

15. After school and art college he worked as an art director at an advertising agency alongside Salman Rushdie.

16. He designed many of his own book covers.

17. He abhorred violence and didn’t plan to write horror but he explained that it just poured out of him.

18. In a famous scene in his second novel, The Fog, the entire population of Bournemouth walks into the sea.

19. Five of Herbert’s novels have been adapted for the cinema, television and radio.

Book Review: The Rats by James Herbert

It had been an age since I last read this book - in fact I'd almost forgotten about it. It was one of those books I loved during my teenage years, and must have read several times. It had started my love affair with the much missed James Herbert; a love that still burns to this day.

I was reminded of  it after finding a battered old paperback copy amongst a box full of old paperbacks I bought from a local boot sale - A kind of lucky dip. The box was stuffed full of old books. handwritten, in thick black marker pen,  upon the side of the box was '50 paperbacks, mixed titles, £5 the lot'

Well how could I refuse such an offer! There were several Louis Lamour titles visible towards the top of the box, a couple of Guy N. Smiths and several Edge westerns. There was no way of telling what goodies would be waiting  when I dug into this box of ancient delights. It was exciting picking up the box and taking it to my own car boot.

When I got the box home I found it actually contained 58 paperbacks, making it even more of a bargain - twenty of these books were Louis Lamour titles, there were ten Executioner books, three James Herberts (the Rats being one of them), five Edge westerns, ten Guy N. Smith titles, the rest were madeup of books from the Keyhole Crime series, two of these were by Simon Brett - I do like Simon Brett.

Anyway, I picked up the ancient copy of the Rats, taking in the aroma of its aged pages and started to read - three hours later I'd read the entire book.

In one sitting I'd lost myself in the grim world of 1970's London as the city suffered an onslaught of mutated rodents. When I'd last read this book I would have been a teenager, or in my early Twenties at the oldest. Back then I would have been a book obsessed reader who looked at authors as almost God like creatures, men and women who were set apart from the rest of us by their talent and brilliance. Now I'm in my early Fifties, a professional writer with several titles to my name in the bookshops, and I realise that published writers are not Gods, but merely people compelled by a need to tell stories. And you know reading the book now, coming at it not as a gore obsessed youngster but as someone who can understand the craft,  I think I really appreciated the brilliance of what Herbert did in this his debut book.

The story is told in a five act structure, superbly well paced with several interludes in which the reader gets to catch his/her breath before the mayhem starts again. There also a lot of metaphor that I likely missed as a younger reader - there is for instance a working class, semi-socialist subtext hidden amongst the horrific tale. It is true that the book has aged somewhat and some of it would fall foul to political correctness - blacks are described as coloureds (which was then the accepted term), women are not exactly passive but definitely second fiddle to the men, and homosexuality although treated with surprising sensitivity given the era, comes across as an abnormality. But then this was the early 1970's and the author is only describing the world he lived in at the time of writing. The London of this book for instance is very different to the city of today - The docks, which feature so prominently in the book as an industrial zone on its last legs has since been redeveloped into a gleaming and characterless ediface of neo-liberal greed. The now long demolished inner city slums are a breeding ground for the vermin who drive the story, and although these slums may now be consigned to the history books the city today suffers from a different kind of vermin, but don't get me started on that subject.

Back to the book.

The main character is Harris, an art teacher in an inner city school populated by tough as nails children. And after an opening in which an homeless homosexual is consumed by the rats we find our hero drawn into the story when one of his students turns up at school complaining that he has been bitten by rats. From there we are dragged through several set pieces - the underground scene is particularly effective as is the section in which the school is under siege from the killer rats. And the climax of the book is a masterclass in suspenseful pacing.

The Rats then is a far better book than I remember - yes it has all the gore that satisfied the teenage me, but there was a skilled writer at work here, and he delivered his story with panache and class. In fact for a book I must have read several times already, this reading was actually the most rewarding. It's quite brilliant.

Fear this - interview with John Gilbert

Earlier this week I interviewed John Gilbert, editor of the now defunct but soon to reawaken, magazine, Fear, for the Archive's sister blog. Scary Motherfucker. The interview was posted in two parts and here for the Archive I repost the entire piece.

Enjoy

Note for this interview I adopted my Vincent Stark persona.



Fear Magazine was spawned in 1988 and quickly became a favorite among fans of horror, fantasy and Sci-Fi – right from the start Fear was different from most other genre titles. It was more cerebral than most and was rare in that it had a fiction section which provided opportunities for new writers as well as featuring work from established voices. I was a huge fan of the mag, never missed an issue and this week I got to sit down with editor, John Gilbert to chat about Fear Magazine, as well as John’s other genre related activities.

Scary Motherfucker presents Vincent Stark in conversation with John Gilbert.

VS: I remember Fear Magazine hitting the shelves and it had the look of a few of the computer magazines of the time, most noticeably Crash with which it shared a cover artist.  I believe you were working in the computer press prior to launching Fear?

JG: Yes, I was Deputy Editor at Sinclair User and had also worked for Computer and Video Games. In fact it was a piece for them on the horror genre that got me thinking about the possibilities of a horror/fantasy magazine. There were already publications such as Starburst out there and I figured that a new magazine would need to stand apart from the others, to draw in fans because it was written by fans. It was blessed in that it had the financial muscle of a successful publisher in Newsfield which also gave it a top knotch design team and a brilliant illustrator.

VS: Fear was more intellectual than most genre magazines, and I was delighted you covered horror literature in as much depth as you did movies, a rarity for the period. The magazine managed to lure some big names to its pages. Were the genre luminaries always receptive to Fear?

JG: We were very lucky to attract top names like Ramsey Campbell, Stephen King, James Herbert and Clive Barker. We were serious about presenting their work in a way that the mainstream newspapers and magazines were not. And I have to say – we did it in style. I was amazed at some of the layouts the design team put together.


VS: It must have been great fun to hang around with these genre luminaries. Any anecdotes you’d like to share?

JG: I always felt grateful when writers invited me into their homes or said kind things about the magazine. Clive Barker even phoned to congratulate us when the magazine launched. He was so busy and certainly didn’t have to do that but he did anyway. And I remember getting very drunk on Brandy and Coke whilst talking to Brian Lumley at his house in Cornwall. Incredibly that turned out to be one of the best pieces I ever did.

VS: Perks of the job.

JG: One of the weirdest interviews I did was with Shaun Hutson – his then current novel featured a scene set in the underwear section of a well known department store, and Shaun took me there and tried to convince the manager to let us do a photo-shoot amongst all these knickers. We were turned down and so we shot pics of Shaun in front of the store. When the interview was published I described Shaun as the most disgusting horror writer because of an incident that happened in one of his books – we’re talking a zombie blow job here with loads of maggots. He returned the compliment by signing my copy of the book, “to the most disgusting editor.” It’s all good memories – I also recall a magical tour of Liverpool I took with Ramsey Campbell as my guide and a similar trip around Newcastle with Stephen Laws. Stephen and I followed this up with an evening watching Hammer movies which we both love.

VS: What about the celluloid side of the genre?

JG: I did a lot of set visits to Pinewood. I particularly enjoyed a visit to the set of Hellraiser II and meeting Ashley Lawrance and Kenneth Cranham. There was also one time when I got too close to the Batman set and was chased off by ferocious guard dogs.

VS:  You co-wrote the Nightbreed Making of book with Mark Salisbury and you’ve mentioned Clive Barker. He of course burst onto the scene with the excellent Books of Blood series. He was the writer Stephen King called, the future of horror. Are you surprised at the way he’s gone with his writing? Seemingly away from out and out horror and more into dark fantasy.

JG: I’ve massive respect for Clive who has continued his creative output despite chronic illness. Many careers were launched on the tide of his success and he is the consummate all round artist, pushing in new directions. I don’t think he’s abandoned horror and I suspect he has a few more surprises up his sleeve for us. I hope that we can all broaden our horizons and follow Clive’s lead and I certainly hope we can continue to be proud of the horror genre and I will never let it limit what I write be it fiction or journalism.

VS: Speaking of fiction, tell us about your forthcoming book.

JG: I’ve a novel that I can’t reveal too much about at the moment. I’ve had the title, The Knowledge which refers to the rigorous test London Cabbies have to go through before they can get their licenses. They must learn all the back routes and the quickest way from one place to another. They are the custodians of the secrets of London, where the skeletons are buried and all of the strange things that go on. That said the novel is not about cabbies and it’s got something for everyone – action, weird sex, violence, occult powers and a mystery at its heart. I’ve also got other novel projects and short stories in the planning stages.

VS: Keep us informed on these works.

JG: Of course.

VS: Fear’s fiction section was so popular that it spawned a spin off fiction magazine, Frighteners. However one issue featured a controversial story, Eric the Pie by Graham Masterton and the biggest retail chain, W H Smith pulled the title from its shelves. Did this hasten the demise of the title?


JG: No not really. I think it made us more determined to be cutting edge. We did Satanic and Vampire issues that shook up people and led to me going face to face with a vicar on Radio Four’s Halloween chat program. At the same time it also drove us to find ways to go right to the line without stepping over it.

VS:  Why did Fear Fold?

JG: Newsfield, our publishing company, went into administration. Let’s just say that for reasons that had nothing to do with Fear, which was still in profit, it all came to an end. I was given a decent budget to produce the magazine and I used this to pay the freelancers – anything left I took as my salary. Needless to say the more I spent the less I earned but I was usually able to strike up a nice balance.
VS: I concur -  had you not then the magazine would not be as dearly missed as it is.


VS: Fear’s demise seemed to coincide with a dip in the horror genre itself. It seemed that the genre went from being massively popular to a niche market almost overnight.

JG: I think that fans will only take so much repetition and no matter how good a writer is if they’re working with stereotype plots and characters then it’s a turn off. There is only so much faith you can put in a genre that keeps repeating itself. That said it seems as if someone had applied the defibrillator and there’s a renaissance in the air. Bring on the new monsters because I feel the genre is rising again. I feel it in these old bones.

VS: So do you still read widely in the genre?

JG: Oh yes, I’m still  a massive fan. At the top of my reading pile sits Andrew Neville who writes the kind of horror I like and his style is so polished. Then there are old friends like Mark Morris, Nick Vince and Tom Fletcher. I’m also eager for the long awaited new novel from James Herbert (Ash). But there are many more writers that I need to get to know like Gary McMahon whose work I will explore over the summer months.

VS: What about genre film and TV?

JG:  Stephen Volk is fantastic. I loved Awakening and I still have Afterlife on DVD. Then there’s Guillermo del Toro who is awesome, even in Spanish and finally Mark Gatiss whose babies I would gladly have. I’m also a sucker for Christmas Ghost Stories.

VS: Back to Fear – are you surprised that the magazine is so sadly missed?

JG: Stunned. I knew that copies were being sold on eBay but I never expected the response I got when I started a Facebook page (befriend John HERE). I’ve had many offers to restart the magazine, but the deals have always fallen through. Now though I have enough finances to try again but it is difficult to find a major distributor. The market is apparantly flooded with enough genre magazine. And so in the meantime I have taken the advice of some collegues – I work at Pearson which owns Penguin – and am about to unleash some fiction onto the market.
Hungry Faces - Publication date by Opium Press is now scheduled for 27th September in eBook format and paperback.

VS: I’m glad to see the book will be available as a eBook – I seem to read everything on my Kindle these days. Do you think the ePublishing boom will be good for genre fiction?

JG:  Indeed – the ease in which anyone can produce an eBook means that innovation will out and that good genre fiction can once again prosper. Fans will get what they want and new writers will be able to develop their talents in a public arena. Of course there will be an awful lot of dross out there but that’s where blogs such as this, and magazines like Fear cab provide a service.

VS: So come on tell us about the possible Fear relaunch. There are many of us eagerly waiting to buy the magazine again.

JG: We have a new design team who have already recreated the Fear format but with 21st century tweaks. We will be moving with the times but also serving past subscribers by retaining all they loved about Fear MK1. We will also carry on publishing fiction within the magazine but have yet to take on a fiction editor. The bad news is though that most of the major distributors have declines to stock us, but that will not put us off and we are currently looking for alternative distribution. Once we can prove we have a good reader base then we can go back to distributors.



VS:Which is why Scary Motherfucker has started  a Facebook page to bring back Fear Magazine -  join the campaign folks.
John’s website is HERE
Facebook bring back Fear campaign HERE

Batman's Dogs, Lumley's Coke and Shaun Hutson's Knickers....

Fear Magazine was spawned in 1988 and quickly became a favorite among fans of horror, fantasy and Sci-Fi – right from the start Fear was different from most other genre titles. It was more cerebral than most and was rare in that it had a fiction section which provided opportunities for new writers as well as featuring work from established voices. I was a huge fan of the mag, never missed an issue and this week I got to sit down with editor, John Gilbert to chat about Fear Magazine, as well as John’s other genre related activities.

CHECK OUT THE INTERVIEW WITH JOHN GILBERT HERE

The Woman in Black

I saw this movie during its original cinema run and was mighty impressed, but I wanted to watch it in more intimate surroundings and so I picked up the Blu-Ray which was released earlier this week. And I found it even better the second time around. Of course there’s no blood and gore and the movie relies on storytelling and atmosphere to create the scares, which away from the shared audience experience of the multiplex, really hit home. It’s a quiet film, a slow burner and it needs the viewers full concentration to get the most out of its cleverly told and acted story.

The plot should be known by the world and his dog but to recap = Harry Potter plays a single father who is still grieving the death of his wife during the birth of their baby son. He is sent to a remote coastal village to put the affairs of a deceased woman in order, before her house can be put on the market, but the house is haunted by the woman in black, a malevolent spirit who is revenging herself on the villagers who she feels failed to save her son from drowning in a mud pond. The film is visually rich and impressively atmospheric, harking back to the Hammer movies of yore. The viewer’s nerves are kept taught throughout, with wind-up dolls springing suddenly to life and the light glinting off the eyes of a toy monkey giving every impression of a malign supernatural force at play. It is to the director’s credit that none of this feels too hackneyed and the eponymous woman in black (Liz White) is played with unforgettable menace.

The movie has been a big success for the  resurrected Hammer Films and will hopefully set off a cycle of period horror movies, which was always something that Hammer did best. I’m not too sure that Harry Potter holds the  gravitas required to carry the part, and he does seem far too young to play a tortured widower with a four year old son, but it was probably his name which lured the hordes into cinemas to see this low key ghost story so his casting was likely a masterstroke.  In fairness though Harry Potter does well with a challenging role and often his youth serves as a reminder that he is an outsider in the village, but he does seem to downplay the scares and often comes across as oddly emotionless.
There are many changes from the novel but for the most part they improve on Susan Hill’s original story, but the ending is something of a let down  – Hill’s original story  had an ending that haunts you long after turning the final page, but the movie  wraps it all up quite neatly. Still  the film deserves kudos for proving that  a defiantly British, old-school horror movie devoid of sex, violence and profanity can be box office gold.

Deranged

Deranged is a Spanish movie which was written by Oscar Carrion and directed by Neil Jones, whom Archive readers  know as the man who is working on the early stages of bringing my novel, The Tarnished Star to the screen as the all action western LawMaster. Can't wait for that to happen.

Neil's been a busy man and directly following shooting on the horror movie, The Reverend he was off to Spain to shoot Deranged. He's back in good old Blighty now and about to start shooting another movie. I’ve blagged a part in this so expect news when I’m able to post it. I’m looking forward to this and very much enjoyed being a part of Neil’s previous indie horror, The Reverend – there’s a little news on that below.

Deranged centers on four girls who go on a bachelorette party weekend to a country house, in rural Spain, and in grand horror movie tradition things start to go wrong...very wrong...totally bloody wrong...or in youthspeak, like totally fucked up wrong, dude.


Deranged stars Craig Fairbrass, Marcia Do Vales, Natalia Celino, Victoria Broom, Tabby Quitman and Pablo Olewski.

Trailer below:

Ghouls and Goblins

Introducing Vincent Stark

Vincent Stark is a reclusive writer, who shuns all contact with the outside world. He has not been seen in public since 1979. Although, from time to time, there have been rumours of sightings of the author lurking in the shadows of the cemetery behind his dilapidated mansion house deep in the Rhondda Valley countryside.
It is said that he is suffering from a skin condition which is aggravated by sunlight and is thus forced into his twilight existence. There is much debate over his well known skill with, the Stylophone and his penchant for playing jazz phrases on his own podcast, Scary Motherfucker. Indeed Stark seems to have picked up this skill overnight and there is one urban legend of him visiting the crossroads one evening and selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his ability on the stylophone.

The devil has all the best tunes

December 2011 saw the  publication of a new novel, The Dead Walked and the author, showing the first signs of clawing his way back into the public consciousness now has a Facebook page – please support the author by clicking like on his page, HERE
However for now Vincent Stark remains hidden away, his groceries delivered by a string of crucifix wearing delivery men and his bills paid by automatic withdrawal from the blood bank.

My novella, The Dead Walked, the first in an all new trilogy, is available now at an incredibly low price.

Some said it was viral.
Others claimed it was an act of God.
Either way the result was the same and the dead walked.
September was her favourite time of the year, and late September, when the autumn was just preparing to hand over to winter, when there was still a residue of the late summer warmth in the air, as well as the crisp promise of the iciness to come, had always been, as far as Missy was concerned, the finest chunk of that particular month.
Not for her was the spectacle of high summer, nor the morose beauty of mid winter. Of course they both had their fineries but these paled next to the season when the leaves glittered with reflected sunlight. It was the autumn, with September being the highlight of that season, which she loved – a time when nature put on its finest display as the lush summer growth was magically transformed.
The sky itself seemed to glow at this time of year.
September was a time of promise.
A time of rebirth.
Not this September, though.
This September, Missy would remember as, the time the dead walked.
Download a free sample before you decide – HERE

HERE'S VINNIE....

Introducing Vincent Stark

Vincent Stark is a reclusive writer, who shuns all contact with the outside world. He has not been seen in public since 1979. Although, from time to time, there have been rumours of sightings of the author lurking in the shadows of the cemetery behind his dilapidated mansion house deep in the Rhondda Valley countryside.
It is said that he is suffering from a skin condition which is aggravated by sunlight and is thus forced into his twilight existence. There is much debate over his well known skill with, the Stylophone and his penchant for playing jazz phrases on his own podcast, Scary Motherfucker. Indeed Stark seems to have picked up this skill overnight and there is one urban legend of him visiting the crossroads one evening and selling his soul to the devil in exchange for his ability on the stylophone.

The devil has all the best tunes

 

This week saw  the publication of a new novel, The Dead Walked and the author, showing the first signs of clawing his way back into the public consciousness now has a Facebook page – please support the ageing author by clicking like on his page, HERE

However for now Vincent Stark remains hidden away, his groceries delivered by a string of crucifix wearing delivery men and his bills paid by automatic withdrawal from the blood bank.

The Dead Walked by Vincent Stark
  AVAILABLE NOW

Can we have your attention please....

AVAILABLE NOW: Book one in The Dead Walked trilogy
Written by Vincent Stark – check out Vinnie’s Amazon page HERE
The Dead Walked – a new kind of zombie thriller

 

 

Click on image

 And coming March 2012

Visceral Images

The Dead Walked Book One: Outbreak will be available exclusively from Amazon for 90 days and should be on sale from Amazon’s Kindle store tomorrow, and will also be available from the Kindle lending library.

Early next year the book will also be available in all other eFormats.

The novella is the first in The Dead Walked Trilogy.
The cover art was done by Tony Masero, an artist whose works has graced the covers of many a book – I came to know Tony from his work on the Edge western series but he has over the years done many horror novels including books by James Herbert and Dean Koontz.

Check out Tony’s work HERE



And below is look at what went into the creation of the cover art for The Dead Walked, and what’s more later this week I will reveal Tony’s cover art for The Dead Walked Book Two which will see print next March.

Walkers, Walkers everywhere 3 - I Walked with a Zombie (1943)

Released during the very real horrors of World War II this was the second horror film from producer, Val Lewton, the first being the iconic Cat People, and if you think Seth Graham Smith was the first to mix zombies and the classics with Pride and Prejudice with Zombies then think again. Lewton adjusted the original script to be a loose adaptation of Jane Eyre. Lewton borrowed the story, which is set in a plantation, from Charlotte Bronte’s novel, Jane Eyre, but set in it on the island of St. Sebastian. Betsy Connell (Frances Dee), an innocent and pure Canadian nurse, accepts a position on the troubled Holland family plantation and in the best creaky old horror film fashion all is not what it seems.


Ignore the cheesey title which makes it sound like a film along the lines of, I was a Teenage Werewolf because I Walked is, like Cat People before it, a cut above most of RKO’s horror content. It went unappreciated by the critics of the day with the New York Times calling it dull and disgusting, but over the years it has rightly attained classic status and is these days regarded as one of Lewton’s best films, if not superior to The Cat People it is at least its equal. The voodoo element of the film is cleverly understated and it is not clear to the viewer if Jessica Holland, wife of the plantation owner, is actually under a supernatural spell or the victim of some strange tropical illness. Modern viewers may find it slow but it is one of the best pre-Romero zombie movies. There’s also a great joke when the disclaimer in the opening credits about the characters and events presented in the film denies any similarity to “actual persons, living, dead or possessed”.

Well worth seeking out.

Want an all new zombie fix -


The Dead Walked by Vincent Stark

Some said it was a virus
Others called it an act of God
Either way the result was the same when the dead walked

Horror's Golden Age

Horror tends to thrive during times of crisis, offering catharsis, escapism and a metaphoric means of coping with problems that seem unsolvable.

 
Historically this has always been the case. It certainly was true during the Great Depression, when Universal Pictures was rescued from bankruptcy by its golden age of horror film – Dracula, Frankenstein , The Invisible Man , the Creature from the Black Lagoon  and all the other creepy creatures that lit up the silver screen, offering escapism to cash strapped moviegoers. Right across the spectrum of modern media horror is booming – take the two biggest successes in popular literature over recent years – Harry Potter and Twilight and whilst neither are strictly horror they both use many of the conventions of the genre. TV shows like The Walking Dead and American Horror are massively popular, and of course HBO’s True Blood is still holding its own. The horror novel is most certainly on a high. There are some great writers out there from the well know masters such as Stephen King, Clive Barker, Jack Ketchum and others to relatively new names like Christopher Ransom, Joe Hill, Max Brook and (dare, I say it) Vincent Stark. The latter of course is wishful thinking since his debut horror novel, following a string of bestselling westerns,  isn’t due out till the end of the month and he is me

So why is it that during shitty times we turn to the dark side? Maybe it’s the increasingly polarized political landscape, generating so much us against them rhetoric. Perhaps it has something to do with all the  college students’ fears of  being unable to find work or middle-aged parents’ worries about keeping their homes.


Then again maybe its something to do with the fact that we, in Britain at least, have the Dark Party in government. Or maybe it’s just the fact that we, viewers,readers, like the safe scares that films and books provide. And whilst it is true that thought-provoking horror works are few and far between recent years have seen several horror novels of real depth – Låt den rätte komma by  John Ajvude Lindqvist , known by its Anglo title of Let the Right One In (I’ve not enjoyed a novel as much as this is years)is a masterpiece of literature whatever the genre, and Christopher Ransom has taken age old themes and twisted them through modern sensibilities. Both of these writers need to be read by anyone interested in the horror genre.   And it’s the same with film and TV and for every predictable slasher of the week flick you will find films and programs of true worth. Horror as a genre is changing, mutating and it is at last gaining some of the acclaim that has been denied it through snobbery for far too long. Stephen King is no longer considered a hack writer and real critics are dissecting his work  and finding relevance to the society we live in – something  all great writing mirrors.   And this is a good thing because for too long horror has been consigned to the ghetto and looked down upon with disdain and yet TV shows like American Horror Story, Being Human, The Walking Dead and True Blood are popular with mainstream audiences, horror novels are read by millions and fright films are always popular.


Yep this truly is a golden age for horror – and ain’t that just fine and dandy!