Conrad Williams's Blog, page 16

Joel Lane

Me with Ramsey Campbell and Joel Lane, photo by Peter Coleborn

In 1986 I was desperately trying to find like minds. I wanted more than anything to be a writer but there was nobody at the sixth form college in Warrington where I was studying for ‘A’ levels who was similarly driven. Then I heard from one of the older boys in my form about a writers’ group in town that he sometimes attended. It was hosted one evening a week by a poet called Gary Boswell in a cold, prefabricated unit (now demolished) on Museum Street. I went along and met Gary, and the other members of the group, and continued for a year or so until the group disbanded. On one occasion, Gary invited Rupert Loydell along as a guest speaker. Rupert edited (edits! it is still going) a small press publication called Stride. He brought some free copies for us to take home. Inside these magazines were mentions of other small press markets looking for stories.

All of this is a long-winded way to explain how I first learned about Joel Lane, who died on Tuesday. It was through the small press publications being produced in the middle to late ’80s that first alerted me to a wonderfully dark, perceptive and very British voice. It was also the first voice in fiction that really called to me, as if something stoppered inside had been uncorked. He wrote fearlessly, honestly, with verve and crunch, and narrated urban horror stories about places I recognised. He became a great influence and it was wonderful to finally meet him at the Midland hotel, Birmingham, in 1992 when I attended Fantasycon for the first time.

We became good friends. He visited me when I was living in Morecambe, studying for my MA in 1993. In an age when people were turning more and more to word processors and electric typewriters (one email he wrote to me after sending him a PDF while I was putting together the Gutshot project, for which Joel provided the closing story, reads: There’s no attached PDF on my screen. I have no doubt you sent one but my PC won’t register it. Technology hates me. It’s mutual. I have no solution except smashing my computer, which won’t give me a proof, or burning down the house, which won’t help anyone. If this were the wild west I’d know what to do, but you know what? It isn’t), he was resolutely old school, writing long letters to me in his unusual, almost childish handwriting, very neat (I wonder how many bottles of Tippex he went through), the words transferred so hard to the paper that the back of the page felt like Braille. He would send me mix tapes he’d created (Joel cared very deeply about music and had deep knowledge of and an eclectic taste in it) with titles such as The Miserablist Tape [you ever heard]). Sometimes he would phone me and we’d talk about how we were doing, what we were working on, what we were reading and listening to. Once, in that soft, lightly lisping voice of his he told me he’d been a bit fed up – health issues, problems at work, etc – and then he sighed and said: ‘I’ve been reading a lot of Polish war poetry lately…’

His fiction is sometimes difficult, but in a good way. It often paints a bleak picture, but it is underpinned by love and hope and humour. Joel was a very funny guy. He was also deeply thoughtful and ludicrously intelligent. And he was generous with his time, reading drafts of new stories, offering detailed constructive criticism, encouragement and suggestions. He became greatly animated when I told him I wanted to write about insects for The Unblemished, and rattled off a list of authors I’d do well to read. I hardly ever saw him angry, but he was fiercely against injustice of any kind. He was one of those rare people who are more concerned for those around them than for themselves.

Since getting married and having children, I saw and heard less of him and now, of course, I’m regretting that. At least I got to see him once a year at Fantasycon, and I will always remember him from those times, in his tight-fitting jeans and silk shirts, rubbing at his head as if trying to quell the machinations of his brilliant mind, carrying his plastic carrier bag of books. Hi… how are things with you?

It’s unbearable to come to terms with the knowledge I’ll never see him again, but I’m privileged to have known him. And how lovely that we will always have his many, many outstanding stories to help remind us.

Nothing lasts for ever, and there’s no eternal. Everything falls apart in the end.

Talking about it

‘Writers speak a stench.’ – Franz Kafka

There comes a time during the creation of a novel when I feel the urge to discuss what the book is about, especially (as is currently the case) if I’m mired in problems surrounding the ending. Though I’d really rather not – I’m uncomfortable about discussing any issues I have with a piece of unfinished writing, because rambling on about something that was meant to be written can make the premise itself sound ugly (but also because I’m not the most articulate speaker on the planet) – I find it can help to unblock the old pipes and render evident a solution that seemed otherwise intractable. I’m not one of those writers who is able to keep everything close to their chest from conception until delivery.

Sometimes the poor soul (or souls… today I explained the plot of my novel to a captive – if not captivated – audience in the shape of my third year creative writing students) don’t need to say a word. The simple act of verbalising the problem I have might be enough to dislodge its solution. Those third year writers (themselves involved in trying to unpick the knotty intricacies of plot holes and narrative logic) were very helpful, and offered numerous suggestions and possibilities, some of which could turn out to be helpful. Although I did hijack their session somewhat, it was a helpful exercise for the students too and it led to a discussion of their plans for the piece of writing they’re expected to submit at the end of the year. A number of interesting offshoots appeared in relation to their own work once they’d opened up about it. It’s a little bit like magic, this conjuring of ideas from the simple act of batting words back and forth.

One word of warning though, especially when talking to non-writers, or family and friends, is that you beg a boundary be drawn before a word is uttered, born of bitter experience. Please, you might ask, please don’t just say: what a shit idea.

Hit me with your Twitter stick

Somewhere under Manchester…

As part of the Gothic Manchester Festival I’ll be reading (alongside Ramsey Campbell and Stephen McGeagh) at an event run by the excellent Twisted Tales people (27th October). The evening is an opportunity for us to talk about why we have chosen to set so many of our stories in Manchester. It was lovely to be invited along, but after confirming my attendance I began to have a bit of a panic. How many stories had I actually set in Manchester? I went through my files… plenty set in Warrington and London… a handful set abroad in the Charente-Maritime, in Venice, in the Northern Territories of Australia… but Manchester? Er… one. Which is fine, I suppose. I could read a bit from that (Late Returns, set in Didsbury, if you’re wondering), and try to relax this idea of boundaries to include Warrington while we discussed our reasons and motivations.

A Warrington skyline, 2006

But I thought I’d use my Manchester shyness as a spur to write something new. And something audience-friendly. By which I mean short. Something brisk and baleful, under 1500 words if I could manage it.

I’d been on a tour of Manchester’s subterranean tunnels and long wanted to use that as a location in a story, but it was only while travelling back from Ormskirk last week, when I saw a sign at a railway station (WAY OUT IN 30 STEPS) that I made connections and felt the prickling of an idea. There was every chance it would simply end up on an index card under a pile of Urgent and Pending and Do this NOW you complete sac-head. So I started posting it on Twitter, deciding that I couldn’t cope with the shame of not finishing a project that I was releasing piecemeal to the public.

It’s first draft, warts-and-all, so please be gentle with me if you decide to tag along. You might hate it (you might even enjoy it), but remember first and foremost it’s there to act as a fire under my backside…

‘Rain’ comes to the Kindle

Ben and his family move to France. There is an accident. There is death. There is rain. Much rain.

Rain, the novella originally published by Gray Friar Press in 2007, is now available to purchase for the Kindle. The novella is currently priced at 99 cents in the US and 75 pence in the UK. Rain was shortlisted for Best Novella at the British Fantasy awards in 2008. Also available for the same price are a couple of novelettes, Footprint on Nowhere Beach, which first appeared in The Mammoth Book of Future Cops and A Door Opens and Closes, from a past issue of Cemetery Dance magazine.

‘[Rain is] a short but strong story, like a summer storm, and it left a powerful mark on my mind.’

Dark Wolf’s Fantasy Reviews

Horror films… bubbling under

Ten horror films I love and that have been, or will be again some time, in my top ten… (in no particular order)

The Fly (1986)

The Exorcist (1973)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978)

Rec (2007)

Night of the Demon (1957)

Les Diaboliques (1955)

The Haunting (1963)

Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Angel Heart (1987)

Nosferatu (1922)

My top-ten horror films #1

1 – THE SHINING (1980)

Another example of a director (Stanley Kubrick) who worked outside the genre trying his hand at scaring people. And I reckon, with help from his writing colleague Diane Johnson, he hits the bullseye. Dread seeps through every frame.

I know this film is accused of being over-the-top due to its bug-eyed performances from Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall, but I really think it is quite a subtle picture. I think the cold, clean symmetry of the shots, the pared down spikes of incidental music (if it can be called such a thing), the long Steadicam sequences really add to the pressure being exerted by the forces at work within this dysfunctional family and the malevolent roof over its head.

I like how Kubrick has faith in his own timing. He has patience. In lesser hands the scene in Room 237 (changed from the novel’s 217 because owners of the Timberline Lodge in Oregon, the real-life hotel posing as the Overlook hotel, didn’t want potential guests refusing to stay in it) would have ended with Jack Torrance snatching back the curtain for a ‘jump scare’. Instead we witness from Jack’s POV the shower curtain as it is elegantly teased back by the woman in the bath after an unbearably long wait. Kubrick favourites Joe Turkel and Philip Stone play excellently creepy hotel staff members (you will never hear the word ‘corrected’ laden with more menace).

The novel by Stephen King is a dear favourite of mine, but it was after watching this film for the first time that my flesh began to crawl at the sight of every long, lonely hotel corridor I had to traverse. A brutal, relentless and very, very scary masterpiece.

My top-ten horror films #2

2 – DON’T LOOK NOW (1973)

Utterly devastating. Nicolas Roeg’s magnificent film (based on Daphne du Maurier’s short story) begins and end with tragedy, and contains clues and ambiguities and auguries in almost every scene.

Laura and  John Baxter (played by the excellent Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland) travel to Venice after the death of their daughter. Once there, Laura encounters two sisters, one blind but blessed (cursed?) with the gift of second sight. She can ‘see’ Christine, the Baxters’ dead child. Laura is thrilled, and comforted by this revelation but John is dismissive, despite possessing his own psychic abilities, a power that, to his detriment, he refuses to acknowledge. While the two leads try to come to terms with their loss, the city is gripped by panic; a serial killer is at large…

The emotions and tensions unravelling throughout this film are almost palpable.  Even now, having watched it countless times, I have to switch it off towards the end and have a break, steel myself for the punishing last chase through the wintry Venice labyrinth. An intelligent, powerful, heart-rending classic.

My top-ten horror films #3

3 – ALIEN (1979)

One of a handful of films that caused my heart to beat so hard while I was watching it that I thought it would, um, burst right out of my chest. Utterly nerve-shredding. It was our first real view of space as being anything other than pristine, sterile. Miners work out here: foul-mouthed grease monkeys trying to line their pockets with green on groaning old spaceships held together with spit and prayer. Dragged prematurely out of hypersleep by the ship’s computer, the crew of the Nostromo must investigate an alien signal, a possible SOS. After the volunteers have left, the signal is decoded. Not an SOS after all. A warning. So begins the whittling down of the crew by arguably the most frightening of all cinematic monsters, thanks to the warped vision of HR Giger.

The cast – Yaphet Kotto, Harry Dean Stanton, Ian Holm,  John Hurt, Tom Skerritt, Veronica Cartwright and Sigourney Weaver – are uniformly excellent. I love the ad lib feel to the script and the fact that the monster is only glimpsed, a powerful tactic the sequels, though good, eschew. The brilliant, skeletal score (Jerry Goldsmith again) recalls the ribs of the ancient spaceship discovered on that desolate planet we would eventually come to know as LV-426. Nothing about the music, or the dissonant, echoing rattles within it, fills us with optimism. It is a bleak film, but it is stylish, intelligent and thrilling. The same words could be used to describe Prometheus – Ridley Scott’s belated return to the Alien mythos – but that film contains an absence of simplicity that Alien boasts.

As interesting as the director’s cut is in presenting us with Dallas’ grisly fate, it exerts a considerable brake on the pace of the film. I’d stick with the original release.

My top-ten horror films #4

4 – KING KONG (1933)

You might think this an odd choice. A dated film with hammy acting, too much screaming and obvious models. And yes, it is a creaky old thing. But it contains more charm than any other film on this top ten, and it resonates with me to the point where my heart skips a beat whenever I see that old RKO ident heralding its start. Another film that pierced me when I first watched it as a (dinosaur-obsessed) child and it has stayed with me ever since, even though I now make tut-tut sounds when I see the Styracosaurus chowing down on some long pork.

Kong himself has real presence, thanks to Wills O’Brien’s special effects magic, and the chase to rescue Fay Wray on Skull Island is both grisly and truly thrilling. It’s a wonderful story with some amazing set pieces, and it’s better than you remember. A warning to the wise, however… steer clear of the sequel, Son of Kong, rushed out in the wake of this film’s staggering success.

My top-ten horror films #5

5 – THE WICKER MAN (1973)

Some of the most effective horror films are penned or directed by people who aren’t immersed in the genre. Anthony Shaffer, who scripted the film, is best known for his play Sleuth and his foray into Agatha Christie territory with a couple of scripts featuring Hercule Poirot. Director Robin Hardy was making his debut. I love this film because it manages to get under your skin despite most of it being shot in daylight.

Edward Woodward excels as the upright Sergeant Neil Howie who flies out to the Hebrides on the hunt for missing schoolgirl Rowan Morrison. Christopher Lee reins in his creep gland and plays the charming Lord Summerisle with panache. Britt Ekland catches the eyes as the landlord’s daughter, and gives the oblivious Howie an escape route if only he’d quell his Christian virtues. Howie is simultaneously aroused and disgusted by the promiscuity prevalent on the island and the internal battle he wages – you can almost see the angel and the demon sitting on his shoulders – plays itself out in every nuanced expression.

The title of the film and the iconic picture of the wicker man are like the gun that appears in the first scene of a thriller. You know what’s coming, but that knowledge doesn’t soften the blow when Howie claps his eyes on it for the first time. You find yourself echoing Howie as the sun sets and the torches are lighted. Oh God. Oh Jesus Christ…