‘Absence doesn’t make the heart grow fonder; it makes people think you’re dead’
–James Caan
I read the other day that English writing is dead, which came as a bit of a shock, because I thought I still had a pulse. What the article meant, I imagine, is that the kind of English writing the critic would like to read is dead. True, we rarely produce those expansive Homeric sagas which US novelists publish with such regularity, but English writing is very much alive and well; it’s just not always where one expects it to be. Many English authors I admire work outside the mainstream categories, and perhaps the true picture of anything lies in its barely registered peripheries.
What you have here is a dispatch from what has become a strange side-alley to the house of fiction. After enjoying well over a century of immense popularity, tales of mystery and imagination have spread their wings and transmuted into Dark Fiction, a genre that allows far greater freedom to explore new themes. The English fascination with black humour, cruelty, cynicism and leading men of weak character places us in a strong position to lead the left field. Yet, right now, it’s hard to find editors who will buck the company line to venture into darker territory.
Our great-grandparents had ghost stories; peculiar tales narrated by clubbable men who commenced after knocking their pipes out on mantelpieces and pouring themselves large brandies. ‘And he never spoke another word to the end of his days,’ says the narrator meaningfully at the end of such tales. Now they have gone the way of the western or the locked room mystery, consigned to the second-hand book stalls of history. Quite right too; the world’s a frightening place and nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. There are plenty of darker new tales to write, especially in a nation that obsesses about celebrity sex, the price of cocaine and new shades of nail varnish while its secret population sleeps on deadly streets.
This collection sets out to provide a little more darkness in short form. Darkness of the soul, of the cynic, of the less-than-happily ever after, because Bridget Jones doesn’t always find her prince and life tells you tongue-swallowingly terrible lies. I seem to have set up my stall as the literary equivalent of Guinness or Marmite; something you didn’t think you’d like, but hopefully become addicted to. The first trick is to make each short story cheerful enough to keep you from slitting your throat. The second is to take you with me as I gently move the goalposts.
Aristotle said, ‘Hope is a waking dream,’ and as we search for new things to demonize, the line between wakefulness and nightmares is blurring. Ideas for stories can arrive after particularly circuitous routes through fact and fantasy. Before I wrote the first tale here, an old schoolfriend sent me an old end-of-term photograph with the eventual destinies of our classmates added beneath each face. The three most popular categories were ‘In His Grave’, ‘In Prison’ and ‘In Insurance’. A few days later, a journey across France in a collapsing classic car resulted in a nightmarish trip around the hairpin bends of the stormswept Mont Blanc with a puncture, no alternator and no lights. Somehow these unrelated events conflated into ‘We’re Going Where the Sun Shines Brightly’, although I wonder how many people will still appreciate the movie references.
Some stories were commissions. ‘Dealing with the Situation’ began as a Christmas story for the Big Issue. Few magazines buy fiction these days, and I rarely turn down the opportunity to produce something if asked. The Big Issue has certain rules you need to follow, the main one being Do Not Write About Drugs. This is because the vendors get knocked down by easily confused readers looking to think the worst of them. Another was commissioned (and written in record time) for the Dazed & Confused Annual, who published the piece and forgot to pay me, threw a launch party for the book and forgot to invite me, and forgot to send me a finished copy. I tell you this in case you’re thinking of becoming a writer.
As in previous collections, there’s an ‘Odd One Out’ tale, in this case ‘Emotional Response’, written for my friend Sally, who asked ‘Can’t you write a nice love story, just for a change?’ Sally, I gave it my best shot. The story ‘Personal Space’ was written in a single sitting, something I’ve never done before and wanted to try as an experiment. Unfortunately it happens to be based on fact, and the true-life ending was much grimmer.
I usually rewrite stories when it comes to placing them in a collection, in order to create a ‘definitive version’. Last year I took a walk in an ancient Malaysian jungle, a bookish Englishman poorly prepared to experience the rougher edge of nature. I certainly didn’t expect to emerge with my skin covered in welts and my socks filled with blood. Consequently, I wrote ‘The Green Man’, turning to the once-popular sub-genre of the English tropical story, a tradition that peaked with Kipling and Wells and hasn’t been seen much since Carl Stephenson’s ‘Leiningen Versus the Ants’. Evelyn Waugh’s ‘The Man Who Loved Dickens’ is probably the most reprinted example – it’s a chapter from his satirical novel A Handful Of Dust, but so fine in its construction that it has often appeared as a free-standing horror story. It’s odd how many English writers are sensitive to the surreal and the mysterious. As inhabitants of a grey, damp world, I think one is drawn to seek out the exotic.
In ‘Breaking Heart’, which was written to be performed at an ‘Anti-Valentine’ event at Borders, the character of Emma is my friend Amber, whose experiences as Cinderella I ruthlessly used. ‘Cairo 6.1’ is my one hundredth published story, and I suppose represents some kind of conclusion, or perhaps a fresh beginning. Like many writers, I’ve still never written a story I’m completely happy with, but I hope to continue mining the seam of Peculiar English until I come up with an unflawed gem.
Peculiar English coincidentally describes the annual BFS Christmas bash, held upstairs in the Princess Louise pub, High Holborn, London. The British Fantasy Society is not solely for writers who provide alarmingly detailed maps of elf shires in their novels. It’s a club for anyone who chooses to stray from the straight, narrow path of reality-mirroring fiction. Okay, there’s a preponderance of big jumpers and draught stout at such events, but everyone’s surprisingly sane and likeable, and – unlike some other professions – there are almost as many women as men. Still, they’re all finding that publishers are less willing than ever before to take chances, even though it’s now possible to laser-print ten copies of a book to meet specific demand. This should have led to more choice, not less. All the more reason for me to be grateful to trend-bucking companies like Serpent’s Tail.
Of the stories here, you’ll find five outright happy endings, seven dark conclusions and a number of split outcomes. To me, that seems an even-handed reflection of what life deals out.
It feels like I’ve been away for ages. Actually it was just over two years, during which time I never stopped writing. It’s good to be back in the world of Darker Fiction.