To The Bone
by Tim Lebbon
This interview first appeared in spring 2001 on Mark Chadbourn's website, http://www.markchadbourn.com.
When I started reading widely in the small press about eight years ago, a name kept cropping up all the time – Simon Clark. His stories were shocking, clever, sometimes brutal, always thought-provoking, and it wasn't long before I saw the announcement I'd been expecting. It appeared in Peeping Tom: Simon Clark has hit the big time! Simon's first novel Nailed by the Heart had been bought by Hodder & Stoughton.
Since then Simon has hardly looked back, publishing a string of terrific horror novels such as Blood Crazy, King Blood, Vampyrrhic and Judas Tree. He also had a collection published by Silver Salamander in the USA, Salt Snake and Other Bloody Cuts, and this year sees the publication of what is perhaps his most anticipated book to date, Night of the Triffids.
I first met Simon a few years ago, and initially I could not believe that this tall, softly spoken Yorkshireman had written some of those hard-hitting horror books I had on my shelves. We've been in touch ever since, but there were some questions I'd always wanted to ask him ... like why all the sex in King Blood?
I'm very grateful to Simon for sparing a couple of hours to answer the few questions below.
You rose to prominence out of the small press, a route not normally travelled by many writers. Why do you think there is not more of a crossover from small press to mainstream? Small press mentality, or publisher ignorance?
I'm travelling back in time mentally here ten years or so to my first convention. There in the bar are big name authors – James Herbert talking to a guy carrying what was then a mobile phone (it's the size of a large briefcase). Ramsey Campbell, Stephen Laws, Mark Morris, Ronald Chetwynd-Hayes are signing books for fans. Clive Barker has just entered the building. These are published novelists and I'm in awe of them. At the other side of the room are Conrad Williams, Joel Lane, Michael Marshall Smith, Graham Joyce, and me, sipping pints and we've all had stories in the small press. Now fast-forward ten years and that bunch of young small press writers are published novelists in their own right, so it does happen. The small press can be the gateway to the corporate big press. But what won't happen is a London or New York book publisher reading a short story in a small press magazine then picking up the phone and offering the writer a three-book contract. Unless you're a glittering TV celeb the only way you'll win a book contract is to sit down and write a novel. But the great thing is that the small press is a wonderful training ground – it's here you do your apprenticeship. You'll also make good friends and contacts on the way. And the small press continues to be a superb venue for short stories by new and established writers alike. But here's the short answer: there is SOME crossover from small press to the big corporate guys but it does take time.
That crossover seems to be happening less and less. Horror is in a very bad shape indeed, and you're one of the few writers still publishing horror in Britain. From this perspective, do you see any signs that the genre is about to experience a resurgence here?
There will be a resurgence, the questions are when and how? At first I thought the young readers of Goosebumps would be the adult horror readers of tomorrow, but that doesn't really seem to be the case. If anything, crime fiction appears to be adopting a darker edge, so it's possible that some crime writers will morph into horror and some horror writers will write dark crime. In fact, crime magazines are publishing stories with a supernatural bent now. But who knows? Six months from now perhaps there'll be a new Carrie or Rats that takes the world by storm, then there'll a feeding frenzy by publishers to sign as many horror writers as possible.
Your work has a very powerful apocalyptic feel to it, reminiscent of Wyndham, Christopher and Wells. How much do these writers influence you? And what is the fascination – amongst readers and writers alike – with dystopian fiction?
They influenced me a hell of a lot. I just wish Christopher's powerful disaster novels such as The World In Winter and The Death Of Grass were still widely available. Strangely, there is something deeply compelling about stories that deal with the collapse of civilisation. Perhaps on an instinctual level we're always wary of this happening. Certainly the media run endless stories about global warming, new plagues, asteroid strikes, nuclear winters, GM crop catastrophes. Perhaps we sense disaster is just around the corner and writers feel compelled to explore what might happen through their fiction. After all, if history teaches us anything it teaches that no society or civilisation is indestructible or immutable.
So after your explorations, do you think that humankind is destroying the world ... or will the world destroy humankind?
Good question. Uhm ... how about this: the world is like a self-regulating, self-repairing organism. Humankind might destroy itself and hurt the world badly in the process, but the Earth will recover...
OK, slight change of subject ... let's talk about sex. One thing I've always meant to ask about King Blood is, why the page and pages of graphic sex?
In King Blood the world heats up from the inside: the ground becomes hot to the touch. It might not be as implausible as it first seems. After all, we're standing on a thin crust under which is a colossal ball of molten rock and iron. With the characters suffering the repercussions of a planet that's starting to boil oceans dry and sear the surface, it seemed a natural development that passions would be inflamed, too. Whole ranges of emotions become superheated. My characters love more intensely, but they hate more intensely, too, all leading to a considerable amount of sex, sibling rivalry, super-heated jealousies, explicit violence and out-and-out terror.
I'm a firm believer that it's good for a writer to move on, and in Judas Tree you very effectively crossed the range from violent and shocking, to subtle and creepy. What was the reaction from your fans? Will your future books be heading the same way, or do you have other plans?
Judas Tree certainly caused readers to man the barricades. Some didn't like it; some loved it. I'm a firm believer in writers endeavouring to be as fresh and as inventive as possible. Judas Tree was a ghost story in the tradition of Algernon Blackwood and Shirley Jackson, and I think the readers who enjoyed it most are the ones who love the traditional ghost story where mood and atmosphere dominate. As for the future? I tend to zigzag, almost crossing over from one genre to another. While I'll stay a horror writer, some of my future work might head either into occult territories or science fiction, or even crime.
And talking of crossing genres, your forthcoming novel from Hodder & Stoughton, Night of the Triffids, is your first to be marketed as science fiction. Do you see this as a route you may be taking again? Do you think this genre selection will improve the book's reception?
A: The Fall was a time travel story but marketed as horror and led to SFX's wonderful quote: 'Great science fiction from Britain's premier horror writer' (or words to that effect). But in short, all I can say is that although in my heart of hearts I am a horror writer, sometimes my stories stray into science fiction territory. How they are marketed will be the province of the publisher. I suspect, however, they'll continue to be categorised as horror. Night Of The Triffids is an exception and will be on the science fiction shelves, whether this does improve the book's reception is in the lap of the gods of course.
And while we're stepping around the genres ... have you ever written anything which you'd consider as standing outside the normal genre playground?
One of my first professional sales was mainstream drama. BBC Radio 4 broadcast my short story Six Men With Fire. It told the story of a picket line during a British miner's strike. Even though it was a gritty story of working class men I couldn't resist a streak of the fantastic and looking back on it now it's reminiscent of Arthur Machen's style – if such a thing doesn't sound too outlandish!
Back to the Triffids. 'Triffids' is a word that has effectively entered into everyday speak. Any overgrown garden these days is full of them! What's the continuing fascination with the Triffids as a monstrous creation?
A mating of suburban mundane with a monster? Arthur Machen believed that true horror is when your dog starts talking to you or when roses begin to sing. Prior to the Blinding in Day Of The Triffids these homicidal plants are grown in nurseries; some are lovingly tended by middle-aged civil servants in their gardens, yet these walking, meat-eating plants become humankind's Nemesis. Walking plants appear in folklore, too. St. John's Wort, which also has (allegedly) the power to ward off evil spirits, is supposed to move about to avoid having its flowers picked.
The route to your writing the authorised Triffids sequel was a long and winding road. Can you tell us something of why and how it came about?
When I first read the book in my early teens I was captivated. The book's ending also frustrated me, leaving so much in the air. What happened to the characters on the Isle of Wight? Did they ever solve the Triffid menace? What happened to the power-hungry Torrence? Of course Wyndham never did return to Bill Masen and the rest of his characters, but one day I asked myself, 'Why don't I continue the story?' And to cut a long story short: that's what I did, and it was a real labour of love. Now Hodder & Stoughton are publishing Night Of The Triffids in hardback in June, 2001.
Are we likely to see any screen adaptations of Clark work in the near future?
Nothing on the immediate horizon. But I'm happy doing what I'm doing now and wouldn't exchange writing novels for screenplays. Not yet anyway.
We've chatted about Night of the Triffids ... can you tell us a little about Darkness Demands (due soon from Cemetery Dance and Leisure), and anything else we'll be seeing from you in the future?
There's a whole cluster of things coming up. Blood Crazy is being issued by Leisure in the States in January 2001 with a wonderfully eerie cover. I've signed with Hodder to write a new novel: this will be unashamedly supernatural horror (which must bode well for the genre as a whole). Paul Miller is to publish my first bibliography, listing previous works and printing for the first time what I consider my first 'proper' story. This is A Trip Out For Mr. Harrison which was broadcast by BBC Radio Leeds. If it's true that all FM broadcasts leak out into space at the speed of light then this story of a shipwrecked man will already have flown past several stars and dozens of planets and maybe reaching audiences larger and far stranger than we can imagine. The bibliography, which promises to be a beautifully produced volume with the limiteds containing a unique extra feature, also carries an introduction by a writer not too far away right now by the name of Tim Lebbon – but you knew that already Tim!
As for Darkness Demands, this is one of those stories that was, for me, up close and very personal. It's about a writer of true-life crime stories, John Newton, who begins to receive anonymous notes at the dead of night that demand trivial gifts. What's more, they threaten some form of retribution if he doesn't comply. He soon realises that the people who will be in immediate danger are his own family. Writing the book, I found myself identifying with John Newton. Like any parent, I've worried myself sick over my children – right from them being new-borns when you find yourself checking to reassure yourself that they're still breathing, to all the accidents and illnesses that befall them. My son's going to Prague in March on a college trip. He's sixteen but I'm still going to have a sleepless night or two wondering what he might be getting up to! If into this equation of natural parental anxieties you stir in a supernatural threat – one that appears all powerful and that can step through any physical defence into the heart of your home and inflict terror and pain on the ones you love most then that, for me, is horror in its purest most devastating form.