William Meikle's Blog: Latest, page 48
February 3, 2018
I’m Willie, I’m a Scotsman, and I like horror fiction.
A lot of my work, long and short form, has been set in Scotland, and a lot of it uses the history and folklore. There’s just something about the misty landscapes and old buildings that speaks straight to my soul. (Bloody Celts… we get all sentimental at the least wee thing).
Scottish history goes deep. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a castle or a historic monument or, from further back, a burial mound or standing stone. Five thousand years of living in mist and dampness, wind and snow, lashing rain and high seas leads to the telling of many tales of eldritch beings abroad in the dark nights. Add in the constant risk of invasion and war from Romans, Danes, Irishmen, Vikings and English and you can see that there’s plenty of fertile ground for both fact and fiction to merge into a rich and varied mythology.
I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of “the sight”, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters, with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.
What with all of that, it was only natural that my taste in reading would take a turn towards the spooky.
I think my first close encounter of the Scottish kind must have been with Rabbie Burns. I’m from Ayrshire like Rabbie, and we share a birthday, so he was ever present in my early schooling. I remember learning a recital of the galloping frenzy of Tam o’ Shanter as drunken Tam escapes the witches Sabbath by the skin of his teeth. Walter Scott too wasn’t above slipping wraiths and fairies and fey folk into his romances, and he too was an early sight for me of some old Scots preoccupations with the darker side.
When I started reading seriously for myself, Treasure Island was one of my early favorites, and it led me directly to the man who would be a lifelong companion. Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t just anchor a whole sub-culture of horror with Doctor Jeckyll and his alter-ego — he also wrote some of the greatest adventure novels of all time, and some of the most beautifuly constructed short stories you ever did read. He also introduced me to Scottish history in a way that school books had never managed, and through him I was led to Victorian Edinburgh and London, and directly into the arms of another great Scotsman.
Yes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish. No, he wasn’t an English gentleman. Now that’s out of the way… I fell in love with Doyle through Challenger more than Holmes at first, from a love of The Lost World that persists to this day. Holmes came along later, and when I started writing Holmes stories of my own, the supernatural kept creeping into them, which gets me castigated by Sherlockian purists, but I don’t care; as a Scotsman, like Doyle, steeped in the stories told in the mists and dark rooms in old buildings, it feels as natural to me as breathing. Doyle also wrote some top notch horror shorts that were a big favorite of mine in those early years.
Also writing at the same time was Margaret Oliphant, a prolific Scotswoman better known for romantic dramas than supernatural works, but in later years I discovered a ghost stories collection of hers and was delighted to discover that she too shared our kinfolk’s love for the things that live in the dark and foggy nights in the auld country.
My later reading in my early teens before I found Moorcock then Lovecraft then King was almost all sci-fi or thriller based, but there too I found Scots with a taste for the darkside, in John Buchan and especially Alistair MacLean, a man who would have made a great pulp horror writer in different circumstances.
Later still William McIllvaney and Ian Rankin, while ostensibly working in the crime field also showed me more than a few glimpses of their familiarity with the dark and the ways of things that creep in the shadows.
And then, in the Eighties, horror came back to Scotland in full measure, in Ian Banks’ The Wasp Factory, in Jonathan Aycliffe’s Edinburgh ghost story, The Matrix, and in the many works of Joe Donnelly, a much missed genre writer who gave us a whole range of Scottish spooks, spectres, bogey-men and monsters in his short horror career during the boom years.
Which brings us round to when I started writing for myself, in the early ’90s. I’ve tried over the years since then to explain in a variety of works what the rich history of Scottish supernatural writing has given me. In my new book, THE GHOST CLUB, I’ve gone right back to basics, and provided as part of it three tales as if told by Stevenson, Oliphant and Doyle, and a wee cameo by Rabbie Burns in another story for good measure. I hope I’ve done them justice.
I’m Willie, I’m a Scotsman, and I write horror fiction.
Scottish history goes deep. You can’t swing a cat without hitting a castle or a historic monument or, from further back, a burial mound or standing stone. Five thousand years of living in mist and dampness, wind and snow, lashing rain and high seas leads to the telling of many tales of eldritch beings abroad in the dark nights. Add in the constant risk of invasion and war from Romans, Danes, Irishmen, Vikings and English and you can see that there’s plenty of fertile ground for both fact and fiction to merge into a rich and varied mythology.
I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of “the sight”, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters, with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.
What with all of that, it was only natural that my taste in reading would take a turn towards the spooky.
I think my first close encounter of the Scottish kind must have been with Rabbie Burns. I’m from Ayrshire like Rabbie, and we share a birthday, so he was ever present in my early schooling. I remember learning a recital of the galloping frenzy of Tam o’ Shanter as drunken Tam escapes the witches Sabbath by the skin of his teeth. Walter Scott too wasn’t above slipping wraiths and fairies and fey folk into his romances, and he too was an early sight for me of some old Scots preoccupations with the darker side.
When I started reading seriously for myself, Treasure Island was one of my early favorites, and it led me directly to the man who would be a lifelong companion. Robert Louis Stevenson didn’t just anchor a whole sub-culture of horror with Doctor Jeckyll and his alter-ego — he also wrote some of the greatest adventure novels of all time, and some of the most beautifuly constructed short stories you ever did read. He also introduced me to Scottish history in a way that school books had never managed, and through him I was led to Victorian Edinburgh and London, and directly into the arms of another great Scotsman.
Yes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was Scottish. No, he wasn’t an English gentleman. Now that’s out of the way… I fell in love with Doyle through Challenger more than Holmes at first, from a love of The Lost World that persists to this day. Holmes came along later, and when I started writing Holmes stories of my own, the supernatural kept creeping into them, which gets me castigated by Sherlockian purists, but I don’t care; as a Scotsman, like Doyle, steeped in the stories told in the mists and dark rooms in old buildings, it feels as natural to me as breathing. Doyle also wrote some top notch horror shorts that were a big favorite of mine in those early years.
Also writing at the same time was Margaret Oliphant, a prolific Scotswoman better known for romantic dramas than supernatural works, but in later years I discovered a ghost stories collection of hers and was delighted to discover that she too shared our kinfolk’s love for the things that live in the dark and foggy nights in the auld country.
My later reading in my early teens before I found Moorcock then Lovecraft then King was almost all sci-fi or thriller based, but there too I found Scots with a taste for the darkside, in John Buchan and especially Alistair MacLean, a man who would have made a great pulp horror writer in different circumstances.
Later still William McIllvaney and Ian Rankin, while ostensibly working in the crime field also showed me more than a few glimpses of their familiarity with the dark and the ways of things that creep in the shadows.
And then, in the Eighties, horror came back to Scotland in full measure, in Ian Banks’ The Wasp Factory, in Jonathan Aycliffe’s Edinburgh ghost story, The Matrix, and in the many works of Joe Donnelly, a much missed genre writer who gave us a whole range of Scottish spooks, spectres, bogey-men and monsters in his short horror career during the boom years.
Which brings us round to when I started writing for myself, in the early ’90s. I’ve tried over the years since then to explain in a variety of works what the rich history of Scottish supernatural writing has given me. In my new book, THE GHOST CLUB, I’ve gone right back to basics, and provided as part of it three tales as if told by Stevenson, Oliphant and Doyle, and a wee cameo by Rabbie Burns in another story for good measure. I hope I’ve done them justice.
I’m Willie, I’m a Scotsman, and I write horror fiction.
February 1, 2018
The way ahead for a pulpy pensioner
My pulp fiction sells better than my attempts at weird, more literary short fiction.
There’s no beating about the bush about that, it just does. Over the years my heart has been in trying to make a break through in the weird short story field, and I’ve pushed myself hard in attempts to leave a mark in that area.
But after nearly thirty years at it, it’s not got me where I want to be, and to some in the weird fiction arena I’m still–I’ll always be–‘That hack. That pulp guy’.
They see it as an insult. I wear it with pride.
My pulp fiction sells much better than my weird short fiction.
So, now that I’m in my Sixties, and a pensioner to boot, I’ve been thinking about the way ahead again. I had been planning to write another collection of Victorian supernatural stories this year, and even had an editor interested, but on consideration, my heart is no longer in it. I think I’ve said all I have to say in that area in THE GHOST CLUB, which is what I’ll point to if anybody asks why I’m not doing any more. That collection has picked up great reviews, and is selling relatively well. But INFESTATION, my recent pulpy, big-bug short novel is outselling it, and all my other books, by a long way.
So what with that, and my attempts to sell recent short stories to new weird markets not getting me any joy, this year I’m sticking to what works for me. I’ve got a contract to write another pulpy thriller for SEVERED PRESS, my third with these characters, and I’m having a lot of fun with them.
So there’s that, and the fact I want to write another Derek Adams book sometime this year. I’ll be back in the ghost story arena with CARNACKI at some point too, as that’s a love I can’t shun, and I’d like to get a fourth collection done that has some new stories and also collects some published stories that haven’t yet been collected together.
So I choose fun.
Fun is good. It’s better than angst, especially when you’re a pensioner.
Besides, my pulp fiction sells better than my weird short fiction.
There’s no beating about the bush about that, it just does. Over the years my heart has been in trying to make a break through in the weird short story field, and I’ve pushed myself hard in attempts to leave a mark in that area.
But after nearly thirty years at it, it’s not got me where I want to be, and to some in the weird fiction arena I’m still–I’ll always be–‘That hack. That pulp guy’.
They see it as an insult. I wear it with pride.
My pulp fiction sells much better than my weird short fiction.
So, now that I’m in my Sixties, and a pensioner to boot, I’ve been thinking about the way ahead again. I had been planning to write another collection of Victorian supernatural stories this year, and even had an editor interested, but on consideration, my heart is no longer in it. I think I’ve said all I have to say in that area in THE GHOST CLUB, which is what I’ll point to if anybody asks why I’m not doing any more. That collection has picked up great reviews, and is selling relatively well. But INFESTATION, my recent pulpy, big-bug short novel is outselling it, and all my other books, by a long way.
So what with that, and my attempts to sell recent short stories to new weird markets not getting me any joy, this year I’m sticking to what works for me. I’ve got a contract to write another pulpy thriller for SEVERED PRESS, my third with these characters, and I’m having a lot of fun with them.
So there’s that, and the fact I want to write another Derek Adams book sometime this year. I’ll be back in the ghost story arena with CARNACKI at some point too, as that’s a love I can’t shun, and I’d like to get a fourth collection done that has some new stories and also collects some published stories that haven’t yet been collected together.
So I choose fun.
Fun is good. It’s better than angst, especially when you’re a pensioner.
Besides, my pulp fiction sells better than my weird short fiction.
January 24, 2018
My Fifties in Writing
My 60th birthday tomorrow, and time look back at my fifties in terms of the writing.
In January 2008, when I turned fifty, I had five pro story sales to my name, a lot of small press credits in for-the-love markets, a total of five sales to mainly small press anthologies, and a handful of novels in print in the US small press at Black Death Books. Island Life had gone out of print, and I’d just had a failed year trying something different, writing a straight crime novel (failed), a children’s novel (failed) and I was working on an “Ice Zombies take Manhattan” thing I wasn’t at all sure about. The main thing that was keeping me going was the memory of a sale to the pro anthology NOVA SCOTIA where I’d rubbed shoulders with Hugo and Nebula award winners, but even that thought was fading quickly into the past.
I was new in Newfoundland, with no regular income to speak of, and staring into a void.
Fast forward ten years. I’ve been selling regularly to pro markets with over eighty pro-rate story sales, I’ve had novels, novellas and collections published in some of the better known genre presses, I’ve sold books to foreign markets, and have numerous appearances in anthologies from the big name publishers. I have a lovely shelf of deluxe hardcovers of my work, and a full bookcase of paperbacks of my books and antho appearances.
And we haven’t starved. Which is nice. It’s been a golden period, ten years that I could hardly have imagined back in 2008.
I sense that some of it will slip away a bit now, with the demise of DarkFuse and Dark Renaissance, but I have new places to conquer, new paths to walk, and there’s still the dream of fortune and glory to pursue.
I wonder what my sixties will bring?
Onward!
In January 2008, when I turned fifty, I had five pro story sales to my name, a lot of small press credits in for-the-love markets, a total of five sales to mainly small press anthologies, and a handful of novels in print in the US small press at Black Death Books. Island Life had gone out of print, and I’d just had a failed year trying something different, writing a straight crime novel (failed), a children’s novel (failed) and I was working on an “Ice Zombies take Manhattan” thing I wasn’t at all sure about. The main thing that was keeping me going was the memory of a sale to the pro anthology NOVA SCOTIA where I’d rubbed shoulders with Hugo and Nebula award winners, but even that thought was fading quickly into the past.
I was new in Newfoundland, with no regular income to speak of, and staring into a void.
Fast forward ten years. I’ve been selling regularly to pro markets with over eighty pro-rate story sales, I’ve had novels, novellas and collections published in some of the better known genre presses, I’ve sold books to foreign markets, and have numerous appearances in anthologies from the big name publishers. I have a lovely shelf of deluxe hardcovers of my work, and a full bookcase of paperbacks of my books and antho appearances.
And we haven’t starved. Which is nice. It’s been a golden period, ten years that I could hardly have imagined back in 2008.
I sense that some of it will slip away a bit now, with the demise of DarkFuse and Dark Renaissance, but I have new places to conquer, new paths to walk, and there’s still the dream of fortune and glory to pursue.
I wonder what my sixties will bring?
Onward!
January 21, 2018
Winter Prize Draw – 6 ebook bundle to be won
Now that the birthday giveaway is done, I’ve taken it down off the website, and added a new one, that will run from now until 28th Feb.
In this one you get a chance to win a six ebook bundle containing the following:
- THE HOLE
- NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO
- THE EXILED
- CLOCKWORK DOLLS
- PENTACLE
- THE JOB
ENTER HERE --> http://www.williammeikle.com/giveaway...
It’s a simple wee form on the site, sign up for my newsletter (or tell me the email addy you’ve used to sign up there) and then tweet as many or as few times as you want (the more times, the more chance you have of winning), or follow me on Amazon, or follow the rss feed of my Wordpress blog. All activities get you points, and points mean prizes!
I’m having fun with these giveaways. It gives me a wee distraction from the writing, and also keeps content rotating on the web page itself which can get a bit static otherwise.
In this one you get a chance to win a six ebook bundle containing the following:
- THE HOLE
- NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO
- THE EXILED
- CLOCKWORK DOLLS
- PENTACLE
- THE JOB
ENTER HERE --> http://www.williammeikle.com/giveaway...
It’s a simple wee form on the site, sign up for my newsletter (or tell me the email addy you’ve used to sign up there) and then tweet as many or as few times as you want (the more times, the more chance you have of winning), or follow me on Amazon, or follow the rss feed of my Wordpress blog. All activities get you points, and points mean prizes!
I’m having fun with these giveaways. It gives me a wee distraction from the writing, and also keeps content rotating on the web page itself which can get a bit static otherwise.
January 10, 2018
60th Unbirthday special
My 60th unbirthday special newsletter will be going out on 20th Jan.
Among a batch of free ebooks, there's going to be an exclusive for the newsletter subscribers. I'll be sending out a link to download RHYTHM AND BOOZE, a wee collection of Midnight Eye stories, containing the following:
- Rhythm and Booze
- The Weathered Stone
- The Inuit Bone
- The Forth Protocol
- A Slim Chance
Thirty three thousand words of Glaswegian urban fantasy and occult detection.
If you want in on the deal, sign up at the form on the link. You'll also get my Lovecraftian collection HOME FROM THE SEA free as a new subscriber.
http://www.williammeikle.com/giveaway...
Among a batch of free ebooks, there's going to be an exclusive for the newsletter subscribers. I'll be sending out a link to download RHYTHM AND BOOZE, a wee collection of Midnight Eye stories, containing the following:
- Rhythm and Booze
- The Weathered Stone
- The Inuit Bone
- The Forth Protocol
- A Slim Chance
Thirty three thousand words of Glaswegian urban fantasy and occult detection.
If you want in on the deal, sign up at the form on the link. You'll also get my Lovecraftian collection HOME FROM THE SEA free as a new subscriber.
http://www.williammeikle.com/giveaway...
January 6, 2018
OPERATION: ANTARCTICA
A new creature feature novel from Severed Press. OPERATION: ANTARCTICA follows the survivors of the Scottish Special Forces squad from INFESTATION, to the opposite pole this time, and an investigation of a derelict NAZI base.
In this one you'll find more sweary Scotsmen, lots of bullets, Nazis, occult rituals, an electric pentacle, Winston Churchill, lots of ice, more bullets, and more swearing.
I'm having great fun with this group of my countrymen.
They'll be back.
What's left of them.
January 3, 2018
A tale of two books
I spent much of December giving my new Victorian supernatural collection THE GHOST CLUB a big push, with a whole-hog blog tour, interviews, podcasts and frequent postings on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and anywhere else that would have me.At the same time, my very pulpy creature feature book from Severed Press, INFESTATION was out, but I did little to publicise it beyond a few posts here and there on social media, as it had arrived quickly and with little time to set up reviews or interviews to help with the launch.
And now, into the New Year, they’re both out there and selling, doing okay.
But guess which one is doing better?
I think the cosmos is trying to tell me something.
Maybe I should be listening.
December 30, 2017
2017 - my short story appearances
I was going to blog about how it had been a quiet year on the short story front, then I did a count back. I was rather more busy that I thought :-)
- The Longdock Air / Shadows Over Main Street 2 / Cuttingblock Press
- Call and Response / The Arkham Detective Agency / Dark Regions Press
- A Life in the Day of / NATURE Futures
- The Last Quest / Through a Mythos Darkly / PS Publishing
- Carnacki: The Lakeside Cottages / The Children of Gla'aki / Dark Regions Press
- Carnacki: The Lusitania / Fearful Fathoms / Scarlet Galleon
- Carnacki: Bedlam in Yellow / Nightland Quarterly / Nightland (Japan)
- Transplanted / Ask You, Ask Me / Xiaoduo Media (China)
- Stars and Sigils / Halfway to Anywhere / Sinister Grin Press
- The Call of the Deep / The Return of the Old Ones / Dark Regions Press
- Sherlock Holmes: A Gentlemanly Wager / Sherlock Holmes and the School for Detection / Little Brown
- Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Little Washer Woman / MMX Publishing
- Sherlock Holmes: The Ghost Shirt / Occult Detective Quarterly #3
- Occult Legion: The Nest / Occult Detective Quarterly # 1
- Got my Mojo Working (with David Wilbanks) / Occult Detective Quarterly #1
- The Needs of the Many / The Stars at Our Door / April Moon
- The Pied Piper of Providence / Once Upon An Apocalypse / Crystal Lake
- Staying Alive Among the Beasts / Unnerving Magazine #4
- Outposts / Further tales of Cthulhu Invictus / Golden Goblin Press
Several more interesting things lined up for 2018 too.
Onward!
- The Longdock Air / Shadows Over Main Street 2 / Cuttingblock Press
- Call and Response / The Arkham Detective Agency / Dark Regions Press
- A Life in the Day of / NATURE Futures
- The Last Quest / Through a Mythos Darkly / PS Publishing
- Carnacki: The Lakeside Cottages / The Children of Gla'aki / Dark Regions Press
- Carnacki: The Lusitania / Fearful Fathoms / Scarlet Galleon
- Carnacki: Bedlam in Yellow / Nightland Quarterly / Nightland (Japan)
- Transplanted / Ask You, Ask Me / Xiaoduo Media (China)
- Stars and Sigils / Halfway to Anywhere / Sinister Grin Press
- The Call of the Deep / The Return of the Old Ones / Dark Regions Press
- Sherlock Holmes: A Gentlemanly Wager / Sherlock Holmes and the School for Detection / Little Brown
- Sherlock Holmes: The Case of the Little Washer Woman / MMX Publishing
- Sherlock Holmes: The Ghost Shirt / Occult Detective Quarterly #3
- Occult Legion: The Nest / Occult Detective Quarterly # 1
- Got my Mojo Working (with David Wilbanks) / Occult Detective Quarterly #1
- The Needs of the Many / The Stars at Our Door / April Moon
- The Pied Piper of Providence / Once Upon An Apocalypse / Crystal Lake
- Staying Alive Among the Beasts / Unnerving Magazine #4
- Outposts / Further tales of Cthulhu Invictus / Golden Goblin Press
Several more interesting things lined up for 2018 too.
Onward!
December 29, 2017
The Ghost Club Launch Tour - Last Stop
I’m calling it now — the Ghost Club launch tour is done.
Many thanks to everybody who hosted me, talked to me, listened to me, shared my posts, reviewed the book and generally supported the whole effort. It’s been a load of fun.
The links for everything are archived on my web site on this page if anybody missed something.
http://www.williammeikle.com/aboutthe...
I do believe I’m done talking about myself for a while, although I’ve got a lot of things in the pipeline, so there could be a Meikle on Tour 2018 event to come.
In the meantime, the book is out there doing its thing, picking up great reviews and hopefully a few more to come.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
Many thanks to everybody who hosted me, talked to me, listened to me, shared my posts, reviewed the book and generally supported the whole effort. It’s been a load of fun.
The links for everything are archived on my web site on this page if anybody missed something.
http://www.williammeikle.com/aboutthe...
I do believe I’m done talking about myself for a while, although I’ve got a lot of things in the pipeline, so there could be a Meikle on Tour 2018 event to come.
In the meantime, the book is out there doing its thing, picking up great reviews and hopefully a few more to come.
So long, and thanks for all the fish.
The Ghost Club Launch Tour - Stop 19
THE GHOST CLUB LAUNCH TOUR STOP 19
My as-live radio chat with Armand Rosamilia, talking about the difference between writing short stories and novels, writing for Lovecraftian anthologies, and the vagaries of writing for the independent presses, among other things - I had a blast.
https://projectentertainmentnetwork.c...
My as-live radio chat with Armand Rosamilia, talking about the difference between writing short stories and novels, writing for Lovecraftian anthologies, and the vagaries of writing for the independent presses, among other things - I had a blast.
https://projectentertainmentnetwork.c...
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