England Made Me

So, the always-excellent Vivienne Tuffnell invited me to participate in another of these author-blog-questions-pass-it-on-thingys. And as it's Viv, who was lovely enough to publish my ramblings about Weird Fiction, I've taken part.

Q: where were your born and where do you live now?

I live in Nottingham, a few miles out from the city centre. I was born in a village called Cotgrave, which you can just see if you zoom in on the map. If you move your finger left from there, you're at the place where The Shelter is/was - unless it only exists in my head (see the Afterword in that book).

I also lived in Oxford for three years.

Q: Have you always lived and worked in Britain or are you based elsewhere?

Always in Britain. England made me, essentially, despite what I think about a lot of the people and politics and whatnot here. It might be lurching evermore right-wing, but the beer's still good.

Q: Have you highlighted or showcased any particular part of Britain in your books, a town, a city, a county, a monument, well-known place or event?

A lot of my stories take place in an unnamed and unspecified (although still obviously English) city. However there's a few where real places have formed the basis for them. Red Route is set on a very specific stretch of road in Lincolnshire - the red route signs showing the numbers of deaths are real. And Home Time is very much about the differences the character sees between living in a village in Nottinghamshire and living in the almost dream-like city of Oxford. 

Q: Tell us about one of your recent books...

I'm not sure any of them qualify as recent any more, so I'll just mention again that my next book, Falling Over, will be out in the summer from Infinity Plus.

Q: What are you currently working on?

I'm doing the formatting for a print-version of The Other Room as well as writing the first draft of a short story about someone alone in a lock-keeper's cottage. That character is sums up all I dislike about a certain kind of British (well, English) petty, immigrant-bashing nationalism, actually. The story's not finished yet, but he'll get his comeuppance, I think...

Q: How do you spend your leisure time?
This is like that last question on a job application that I never know how to answer... Reading, obviously - lots of reading. Listening to music. Cooking curries. Not doing as much swimming and exercise as I should. 

Q: Do you write for a local audience or a global audience?

Neither, I don't think. I reckon it's more a global niche audience - that's the great thing about the internet, you can reach the people who have similar cult tastes to you no matter where they are. That said, I guess the stories do contain various British references, slang-words, spellings etc. so readers need to be at least open to that. But my readers are cool, so that's never been a problem.

Story News x 3

So, it's been quite a long time since I've mentioned much about my own writing on here (I can't quite believe The Shelter has been out for nearly eighteen months..!) but all that's about to change...

I'll probably be boring you all stupid talking about this soon, but I'm delighted to reveal that my next collection of short stories, Falling Over, will be out this summer from Infinity Plus. I couldn't be more chuffed - Infinity Plus have put out a lot of books & stories I've loved, so it's a real thrill. 

I won't say anything else at this point - more news & updates about Falling Over nearer the time, I'm sure. (I've added a fancy new mailing list thing to the blog, if you want to be kept super-up-to-date.)

Also, another thrill - Supernatural Tales #23 is out, and it contains my story The Second Wish. I really like this mag (I am a subscriber) so it's genuinely exciting (and surprising!) to have a story accepted for it. The Second Wish is a story about grief, the dead, and memory; it's also a deliberate riff on that old classic The Monkey's Paw by WW Jacobs.

And also (the good news has kept coming recently, which probably means karma's saving up a writing related face-slap for me), I received my contributor copies of Polluto #10 today - it's a really nice looking and well designed magazine, with some great authors in there. You should check it out. It includes a very short piece from me The Men Who Value Everything In Money.

Robert Aickman Word Clouds

So, I've been participating in a fabulous group read of The Wine Dark Sea by Robert Aickman - no need to explain to regular readers how much I admire Aickman's stories, I'm sure I've banged on about him often enough...

Anyway, I wanted to do a post about some of the stories in the book, and I've decided to do something a bit different. Because reading Aickman is so subjective I'd hesitate to offer my interpretation of one of his stories as definitive; so (with their permission) I've decided to use other people's words from the group read to create these 'word-clouds' for the title story and for The Trains. The phrases are just ones that struck me from the discussion, be they people's view on what the story meant, or other stories it reminded them of, or whatever. The idea was to get a more impersonal, multi-layered, ambiguous description of each story than if I'd just waffled on myself.

I think the results look quite good, and if there's a positive response I'll probably do a couple more.

The Wine Dark Sea

The Trains

On Ambiguous Endings

So, The Shelter. It’s generally got very positive reviews, but recently a couple of stinkers have trickled in. Which is just one of those things, obviously – don’t worry, this isn't going to be one of those posts where a minor author no one's ever heard of has a massive sweary breakdown just because they got a one-star review. But I do read all the reviews I get and I did think there was a certain common factor that both these two were complaining about:

“It didn't say much about [the] being in the shelter. I didn't think it was a horror story more a book about things playing with a boys mind.”

“You never find out what's down there or even get a description. !!”

I think these reviewers were expecting a more traditional horror story, with an ending where Alan Dean confronts the thingymabob in the shelter, finds out what it is, and defeats it, somehow. 

Well, The Shelter was never going to be that kind of story - as you’ll know if you've read the afterword, I conceived of it over fifteen years ago and whilst much has changed between then and the final draft, the ending has always been the same. So I'm relatively relaxed about those reviews as they relate to the story itself (although arguably my blurb needs to make it clearer what kind of book this actually is).

What it seems these reviewers are both complaining about, when you get down to it, is ambiguity. I've spoke a lot about ambiguity in the Strange Stories feature on this blog and generally praised it as something that distinguishes a good weird fiction story from an average one. I've mentioned different kinds of ambiguity, from not fully revealing the ‘monster’ (“You never find out what's down there!”) to ambiguity of perception (“more a book about things playing with a boys mind” – I love that angle on the The Shelter, actually).

But it’s an unfortunate fact that, whilst I believe such ambiguity is crucial to a certain type of horror fiction, it isn't very commercial. At all. From a commercial fiction point of view, the story of The Shelter might appear to be literally unfinished – what happens when Alan goes back? Does he find out what is down there? Does he defeat it? You're not telling me the whole story, godamnit! There’s nothing wrong with stories with that type of traditional structure, and I enjoy reading them if they’re well written, but as a writer my main interests are elsewhere. (This perceived need for narrative closure in commercial fiction probably goes a long way to explaining the commercial superiority of the novel over the short story and novella, but that’s another post.)

But, crucially, ambiguity doesn't mean arbitrary. I didn't stop the story of The Shelter at a random point just to be annoying or because my writer's cramp was flaring up. It stopped at the point where there was nothing more to say about Alan Dean’s flight from his past. He has finally decided to go back. I'm sure we've all been in situations where we've agonised over an important decision and then, once we've made it immediately felt better just because the decision has been made. The result of that decision almost doesn't matter that much. One way or another the die is cast, and we feel better for it.

That was the kind of closure I was going for with the story of Alan Dean. From that perspective, the ending isn't ambiguous at all. It ends at exactly that point where the central character's mental dilemma is resolved. In fact I'd go one further: continuing the story would have introduced more ambiguity, because whatever happened would have inevitably cast doubt on the rightness or otherwise of Alan's decision...

Maybe there are no truly unambiguous endings. Maybe, like life, all the author can do is trade off one set of ambiguities against another.

The Shelter (UK | US)