CASE NOTES
PETER TENNANT ON BOOKS
Relic of Death
Bloodeye
Oasis of the Damned
Terror Tales of the Ocean
Sharkpunk
ASSORTED NIGHTMARES AND FANTASIES
The Female Factory
Of Sorrow and Such
THE WEIRD WEST AND THE PICARESQUE: MOLLY TANZER
Vermilion
The Pleasure Merchant
Q&A with Molly Tanzer
DARKFUSE NOVELLAS
David Bernstein’s RELIC OF DEATH (DarkFuse eBook, 99pp, $2.99) opens with hitmen Sal and Bruno returning from a woodland body dump. When their car breaks down they stumble across an isolated cabin in the woods with unusual security in place and decide to go in for a little recreational breaking and entering. Inside they find a locked safe containing a briefcase filled with diamonds, which ultimately proves the truth of the old saying about honour among thieves. The briefcase passes through various people’s hands, including junkie Henry, down on her luck Sandra, and peeping tom building supervisor Max, granting each what they secretly desire, but with unforeseen and fatal consequences, before finding its way back to Keeper Joel.
There’s not a lot to be said about this story. It’s the cursed object template reinvented along the lines of Schnitzler’s La Ronde with bloody death in lieu of sexual liaisons. I could have done with more about the history of the Relic, how it came to end up in Joel’s possession, who had it before him and how long has the tradition of Keepers lasted down the years, but Bernstein sketches in only the minimum information required. His character studies of the various members of the story’s cast are well done. Sal and Bruno are friends and rivals, with very different approaches to their profession, while Sandra is a victim of misogyny, and Max an obvious perpetrator of the same and deeply unsavoury. In each case the Relic takes their natural resentments and fears and amplifies them to the point that they will undertake behaviour that would normally not occur to them, as with one character killing his abusive wife. It’s done well, but at the same time all rather simplistic, a story that entertains and does nothing more than that, which is probably the author’s intention, though I felt something was lacking, such as a reason for what takes place, a point or purpose to it all beyond giving Joel a replacement Keeper to train. It’s like putting the Holy Grail (the anti-Grail in this case) in a story, and using it to do nothing except drink out of. I liked what we got, but felt the story could have benefited from a greater ambition and scope.
In BLOODEYE (DarkFuse eBook, 119pp, $2.99) by Craig Saunders, plumber Keane Reid is summoned to a pub with a flooded basement, where he finds the corpse of a murdered woman nailed to the wall, with a third eye carved into her forehead. It is a reminder of events that took place seven years ago, when he was a police scene of crime photographer, and bore witness to a similar atrocity, only to find that his wife then became a target for the killer. Keane couldn’t save Teresa, but with the help of her spirit he was able to overcome the entity he refers to as Brother Shadow, a demonic creature that lives in his shadow. But now, in the wake of a heat wave, it appears that Brother Shadow is back and Keane must once again confront his nemesis, only this time it will take the ultimate sacrifice on his part.
Fast paced, with over fifty very short chapters, the longest probably only three pages, this is a riveting read. There is more than enough gore to satisfy those who enjoy such aspects of horror fiction, with atrocities taking centre stage at critical moments in the text. And the Norwich setting is convincingly realised on the page, with places that I know personally brought to believable life. At heart, once you get beyond the supernatural elements, what we have is a story of a man trying to keep his sanity in the face of impossible odds, a man who has lost everything, including the woman he loves above all else, and blames himself for doing so (and, with references to medication, Saunders keeps open the possibility that this may all be down to a psychotic break). Central to Keane’s psyche is the act of running, a thread and imagery that moves through the book, with the shift from running away to running towards the threat a pivotal moment. Similarly there is a subtext about love, how Keane needs Teresa’s guidance and reminders of their past love to conquer the evil, whether it be something external or a part of himself. Only one thing let the novella down – the implication that these characters exist in a vacuum, that the pair have no friends or family who will ask questions when Teresa apparently disappears, that her death will have no real world consequences other than the psychological effect on Keane. It’s something I felt should have been touched on and explained a bit more, but other than that minor quibble this was a thoroughly entertaining and engaging read, and I look forward to seeing more by this author, as he obviously has an original voice and stories to tell.
While Bernstein and Saunders are both new to me, Greg Gifune is an old favourite and OASIS OF THE DAMNED (DarkFuse eBook, 75pp, $2.99) does not disappoint. Heather Richter bails out of a helicopter in a remote corner of the Sahara. She is found by Owens who takes her to a ruined fort built beside an oasis. Owens tells her that he has been there for several weeks after his own plane crashed, and the others in his party were killed by the hordes of ravenous ghouls that attack the outpost every night. Disbelieving at first, Richter is convinced by what takes place as soon as darkness falls, joining in with Owens as he slaughters the ghouls, who just keep coming. The fort is well supplied with weapons and food left by previous occupants, such as the French Foreign Legion, and American and German forces from World War II, but all the same it seems inevitable that they will eventually be overrun, a dilemma that calls for desperate measures, an escape plan in which they must risk all.
Quite simply, this is a brilliant novella, one of the best that I read in 2015, if not the very best. It can be taken at face value, with two ex-soldiers engaged in a desperate battle against overwhelming odds, and as far as that goes Gifune gives us plenty of bang for our buck, with graphically described scenes of carnage and mayhem, enough to challenge the blood splatter skills of a Tom Savini. Woven into the narrative are details of the local legends and folklore, Gifune using these to prop up and give credibility to his concept of the ghouls, or in Arabic ghuls (demons), though for all realistic intents and purposes they seem like nothing so much as a zombie army. The bleakness of the setting is conveyed well, with relentless heat a factor in what is taking place, albeit minimalist, Gifune using it simply as a backdrop for the human drama that is playing out centre stage.
And it’s in this aspect that the author’s genius emerges, as we are told Richter’s back story and learn of the guilt she feels at not being present to help her younger brother, a victim of bullying. A further revelation hints that everything taking place is a psychodrama being played out inside Richter’s skull, the last gasp of the consciousness of a dying woman, or perhaps her personal vision of hell. In this scheme of things, karma is a bastard; Richter has lessons to learn and will be doomed to repeat them until she is ready to move on, with central to the story the conversations she has with her mother about death and the morality of war, the reasons we have to kill and die. Rather like a merger of Triangle and those jackal headed hordes from The Mummy 2, this is a splendid work of horror fiction, one that doesn’t stint on the gore effects and thrills, but with a hard moral core that elevates it above so much of what the genre has to offer. I loved it.
DarkFuse also do limited edition hardcover and paperback editions of some of their books, so if you’re a reader who prefers their fiction to come in non-electronic format, check out the publisher’s website (darkfuseshop.com) to see what’s available.
STAY OUT OF THE WATER
Having covered most of the geographical areas of the British Isles in previous volumes of the Terror Tales anthology series, editor Paul Finch now turns his attention to the sea that surrounds this spectred isle for the enticingly titled TERROR TALES OF THE OCEAN (Gray Friar Press pb, 262pp, £9.99). Interspersed between the stories there are the usual treasure trove of non-fiction items that are a vital ingredient in making this series stand out from the crowd, each a fascinating snippet of information about aspects of the sea that hint at something beyond the things known of in our philosophy, with such subjects as monstrous beasties, the Flying Dutchman, and the Bermuda Triangle all discussed.
The fiction complement leads off with ‘Stuka Juice’ by Terry Grimwood, a story with more than a touch of the Indiana Jones about it, as a scientist is co-opted by the Nazis to recover a magical artefact from the seabed, but along the way Grimwood throws in references to legendary musician Robert Johnson of “deal with the Devil” fame, and band leader Glenn Miller, dumping a JCB worth of guilt on his philandering protagonist. It’s a winning mix of fact and fiction, one in which the entirely credible characters and the fantastical situation play off of each other, and in the presence of SS Officer Dietrich we have a memorable villain, somebody it feels good to hate. In ‘The End of the Pier’ by Stephen Laws a young boy’s grandad recounts how he got the burns on his arms when Brinkburn Pier burned down in 1931. It’s a tale that begins slowly and on a personal level, with an overly protective boyfriend out to settle scores with the up-himself yahoo who assaulted his lady’s honour, but then ratchets things up a notch to give us an ending that has Cthulhu’s lesser known cousins throwing a tentacle or two into the wheels of revenge. The story is thoroughly entertaining, not least because of the engaging voice of the protagonist, a man who is confronted with something that is far beyond his understanding, but whose determination to do the right thing carries him through.
The first of four stories first published elsewhere, Steve Duffy’s ‘Lie Still, Sleep Becalmed’ features an understated love triangle and ancient folklore, but the real thrust of the story lies in how the three people on board a fishing boat react when they rescue somebody from the sea who seems rather far gone. The moral dimension, with questions of how do we deal with the zombie menace is the most interesting aspect of a lively but ultimately predictable tale that had echoes of Carpenter’s The Fog about it. Taken at face value, it’s a lot of fun and nothing wrong with that, but part of me wishes that Duffy had explored the implications of the zombie survivor a bit more instead of so readily segueing into the maritime equivalent of a shoot ’em up. In ‘The Seventh Wave’ Lynda E. Rucker gives us the first person account of an elderly woman haunted by the ghosts of her past and the things she has lost to the sea, a tale of abuse and love misplaced, the haunting, elegiac tone almost bordering on that of a fairy tale, and adding a subtle dimension of unreality and terror to what is taking place. At the end we are as unsure as the character herself appears to be as to what happened to her children on a deserted beach all those many years ago, and it is this uncertainty that grants the story its power.
‘Hippocampus’ by Adam Nevill is the most original of what is on offer, told from the perspective of an all seeing eye as it roams the halls and corridors of an apparently abandoned vessel, a setting in which everything appears placid at first, but with slowly building tension until we have the first gruesome signs of what has really taken place, culminating in a revelation that makes horrid sense of the story’s title. It is a magnificent performance, with Nevill delivering sufficient chills to make his method irresistible, in a story that in part reminded me of a sequence in Hawthorne’s House of the Seven Gables in which the narrative lens focuses on the dead body of Judge Pyncheon, but Nevill’s tale is far more horrific in what is ultimately laid bare to our disbelieving eye. In Conrad Williams’ subtle tale ‘The Offing’ the girl child Fearne is fascinated by the sea and the objects that it throws up, but this plays counterpoint to her relationship with an alcoholic mother and absentee father. Strongly conveyed is the atmosphere of the rundown seaside town in which the action takes place, with an almost apocalyptic sense of dread mounting as the narrative progresses, so that we anticipate a great wave that will sweep it all away, the story culminating in a tsunami of blurred imagery.
The best laid plans come undone in ‘Sun Over the Yard Arm’ by Peter James, as a wealthy retired couple set out to sail round the world, but complications set in, both emotional and mechanical. One of four previously published stories, this has a Roald Dahl feel to it, with wife Juliet realising that she doesn’t quite know husband Tony as well as she thought, and the subtext that even the most carefully plotted and idyllic existence can be prone to stray into uncharted territory. In ‘First Miranda’ by Simon Strantzas another married couple with problems go back to the seaside cottage owned by the wife in an attempt to heal the wounds in their relationship, or so the unfaithful Jules believes, but something far more sinister is taking place. With its revelation of a group mind at work, this story offers perhaps the most unworldly vision in the collection, one in which strangeness gives place to the terror of revelation and an ending from the just desserts school of horror fiction.
Third reprint, ‘The Derelict of Death’ by Simon Clark and John B. Ford tells of the fate of the crew of the vessel Jenny Rose, whose encounter with a derelict leads to ever increasing horrors. It’s an old style piece, the sort of thing I suspect William Hope Hodgson would have been happy to put his name to, with a convincing feel to the descriptions of nautical affairs and a sense of the nightmarish immensity of the ocean depths and the things that it might contain, and never less than entertaining. And no doubt some of those things would include Lovecraftian Old Ones, one of whose progeny appears in Jan Edwards’ story ‘The Decks Below’, in which an intelligence officer who specialises in the supernatural investigates what happened to the crew of a submarine. Reading between the lines, it seems clear that Captain Georgianna Forsythe has had other adventures, and this outing is a good advertisement for her back catalogue, with an original monster, some suitably repellent wet work, and an intriguing plot. The fourth and final reprint, ‘Hell in the Cathedral’ by Paul Finch has tourists on holiday in Greece falling prey to local cupidity and monster worship, a solid story with an engrossing plot and engaging characters, and given a certain gravitas by an attempt to tie it in with Greek mythology.
The last two stories are perhaps the strangest. There’s a surreal, dreamlike quality to Adam Golaski’s ‘Hushed Will Be All Murmurs’, set in a world overcome by fog and where a woman’s detached head rests on a beach. It’s a fascinating piece, with powerful and minatory imagery, but the sense of it all remained tantalisingly out of reach for me, the whole like a jigsaw from which several key pieces are missing. ‘And This Is Where We Falter’ by Robert Shearman is an elaborate confection of stories within stories, and central to it all the relationship between a vicar and a gravedigger, with a cemetery planted on a cliff above the sea, and memories of past unhappiness regarding water conflated with a narrative found written on the insides of coffins. At a push you can draw comparisons between the ocean as symbolic of death and the coffin a vessel in which we set sail, or perhaps not. It’s a lovely piece with which to end this anthology, a story that opens up even as the narrative seems to grow ever more cramped and claustrophobic, incorporating elements of the fable and familiar horror tropes, such as fear of being buried alive and the doomed ocean voyage, with a monster lurking below decks. I loved it, and this latest volume in the Terror Tales may well be the best yet.
As editor Jonathan Green reminds us in his introduction to SHARKPUNK (Snowbooks pb, 416pp, £12.99), sharks are at the top of the food chain when it comes to undersea predation. It’s a reputation that’s largely based on the success of Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws and the slew of killer shark films that have been swimming into our multiplexes ever since. In reality approximately ten people are killed annually in shark attacks, which is small potatoes compared to, for example, the twenty nine hundred deaths per annum attributed to the hippopotamus. Of course sharks look the part, while the inaptly named “river horse” does not. In the circumstances, an anthology of shark stories might seem like a further unnecessary libel on this species’ good name, but fortunately Green casts his net wider than the archetypal killer shark template and hauls in a rich and varied catch, and as ever the biggest and most deadly of predators is man himself.
First into the water is ‘Peter and the Invisible Shark’ by Jonathan Oliver, the story of a children’s writer who is haunted by nightmares and hallucinations that involve a fibreglass shark he saw on a visit to an aquarium as a child. There’s a suggestion, albeit only slight, that this fear is rooted in the antipathy Peter feels towards his father, but the irony of the story is that in trying to exorcise the fear through his fiction Peter only passes it on to somebody else, which may or may not be a comment on the motivation of horror writers in general. Antipathy between father and son is the plot driver of Den Patrick’s ‘Blood in the Water’, written as a diary chronicling the creation of a shark/human hybrid. At bottom the story is a Frankenstein variant, told from the perspective of the monster, whose humanity is undermined by men who cannot see beyond their own agenda, and so we sympathise with the character and are shown who the true monsters are. Jaws is transplanted to a fantasy setting in ‘The Lickspittle Leviathan’ by David Lee Stone, with a trainee magician charged with protecting an island tribe from the predations of a monster shark. But of course nothing is quite that simple in this delightful and engaging story.
I wouldn’t be at all surprised if Damien Hirst was an inspiration for Ian Whates’ ‘Sharkadelic’ with an up and coming journalist given the chance to interview the latest art world sensation, a painter who takes his inspiration from sharks somewhat more directly than might be suspected. The reader will probably guess where this one is going, but it’s none the less satisfying for its skilled depiction of ambition in action, and the underlying ideas that touch on and gently, but with barbs, poke fun at the extremes of the art world. ‘Shirley’ by Amy and Andy Taylor has an original concept at its heart. It’s set in a world where nations resolve their differences by having emblematic animals fight each other to the death, and so the British shark battles the American bear for supremacy. The reader is drawn into this tense situation, rooting for Shirley even as we realise the essential cruelty of what is taking place, enthralled in spite of this, and as far as that goes it seems that we are represented by the viewpoint character of scientist Rose, who finds herself the lynchpin in this setup, even while she hates it with all her heart. The story isn’t just about animals fighting, but also about what people are prepared to do, and while the human population might be spared the horrors of war there is something deeply unsettling about what we are offered as an alternative.
And then there’s the slightly bombastic and undeniably tongue in cheek ‘Deep Black Space’ by Toby Frost in which the ramshackle crew of the spaceship John Pym take on a mechanical megalomaniac and his army of void sharks, the whole thing slightly ludicrous and somewhat fun, a most definite change of pace. In David Tallerman’s blackly comedic ‘The Shark in the Heart’ Noah’s parents buy him a fish for a pet which he calls Rover, as he’d wanted a dog, only the fish turns out to be a shark and Noah uses it to adjust his outsider standing in the community. The real thrust of the story lies in the way Noah himself changes, using the shark as a weapon and to intimidate others, developing the very traits that he hates in those who oppress him, with a subtext that turns on its head the old saw about there but for the grace of God. Quietly told and with a strong psychological underpinning in the way Noah comes to mimic the qualities of his pet, and crowned by a delightful end twist, it’s one of the best stories in the anthology.
Occult detective St Cyprian and his associate Ebe Gallowglass go to the aid of a man possessed by the spirit of a shark in ‘Deep Red Bells’ by Josh Reynolds, the story witty and with some excellent characterisation, a piece that put me very much in mind of John Llewellyn Probert’s Massene Henderson and Samantha Jephcott adventures. No doubt taking a leaf out of comic books, Alec Worley’s ‘Sharkcop 2: Feeding Frenzy’ is set in a police department where all the detectives have special abilities, including one who turns into a shark when he smells blood, though their talents are every bit as much hindrance as help. It’s a pun a page romp, with a story that pokes fun at celebrity chefs and reveals the truth about dolphins, and is so over the top that going up the ski slope of the narrative you might meet the ending as it comes down the other side. ‘Sharkbait’ in Richard Salter’s story is the name of a young girl who has a special relationship with sharks, and career criminals need her help to recover their ill-gotten gains from the bottom of the sea, little suspecting that the girl has her own agenda. It’s a slightly contrived plot to my mind, but Salter makes it work through some engaging characterisation, with criminal Laurel more than the two-dimensional bad person required by the plot, and a grimly satisfying reversal of fortune as the end game plays out.
Sharks are only peripheral to the action in ‘Goblin’ by Kim Lakin-Smith, the key to curing a soldier whose craft has crashed on a primitive world. Again, it’s an absorbing read, well written and with the implications of what takes place left to fester in the reader’s mind long after the story is done. Andrew Lane’s story ‘Blood Relations’ tells of prisoner Thorpe, who is offered freedom in exchange for having a shark’s sense of smell spliced into his genes, but with terrible consequences. The idea is intriguing, and its realisation on the page certainly holds the attention, as courtesy of Thorpe we learn to live with an enhanced sense of smell, to experience the world through his nose, though the ending felt rather perfunctory and not quite convincing. There’s an Andromeda and the Kraken vibe going on with ‘Feast of the Shark God’ by C.L. Werner, with a samurai coming to rescue a maiden intended as sacrifice for the favours of the shark god. It’s an action packed and exciting story, with a strong subtext about what happens when you collude with the powers of evil instead of resisting them.
In ‘Le Shark’ Laurel Sills tackles that old standby of a deal with the Devil, fame and fortune in exchange for the firstborn, or something like that, and his Satanic Majesty appears as a rather chilling entity referred to simply as The Shark (it sounds classier in French). The story runs with these common tropes of the genre and gives them an interesting twist, with lively characterisation that takes on board an examination of the trappings of celebrity, and the novel setting of a restaurant where the only food is shark meat. All species are protected in the future world of Jenni Hill’s ‘The Serial Killer Who Thought She Was A Shark’, even serial killers, albeit steps are taken to limit their activities. Courtney manages to find a way to beat the system, in one of the strongest stories in the book, with a striking conceit at the story’s core, engaging characters, and a gratifying denouement, one that comes complete with an environmental subtext. I loved it.
‘Rise of the Übershark’ by Robert Spalding brought to mind a minimalist version of Pacific Rim with its picture of humans in heavily armed suits taking on intelligent sharks, though the truth of the situation is somewhat more complicated. It’s a piece that seems uncertain if it wants to be taken seriously or read as comedy, and the two elements don’t fit together as well as they might, creating a story that entertains but which you can’t quite believe in, where the ending somewhat undercuts what had gone before. Steven Savile’s ‘Swimming with the Fishes’ details a power struggle between various factions in the underworld of Monster Town, and a plot against the great white Big Joe, the kingpin of the town. With echoes of Toon Town in Roger Rabbit it’s a feisty, innovative noir variation, with nothing really decided until the (non-fat) lady sings. In ‘Ambergris’ by Kit Cox the professional monster hunter Major Jack Union has an encounter with the Megalodon, a giant prehistoric shark, and you can probably guess who comes off worst, though discovering how is nine parts of the joy in what is pretty much a regular monster tale in period costume.
‘Silent Waters, Running Deep’ has many of the traits of a typical Gary McMahon story, insofar as there is such a thing. There’s a protagonist whose warped personal psychology drives the narrative, which is centred on the relationship between a social worker and his client, a man who thinks that he is being hunted down by an imaginary shark. Atmosphere is everything, with the world viewed from an angle that is slightly off kilter, one where nothing quite adds up and minatory impressions of madness slowly coagulate until the true horror is revealed in all its repellent glory. Finally we have ‘You Are The Shark’ by Al Ewing and Sarah Peploe in which an unhappy young girl finds distraction by playing an arcade game, getting herself into the mind-set of a ferocious man eating shark. It’s a subtle story, one in which the coping mechanisms we all have are touched on, showing how a form of transference might work, and that for some to become an invincible killer of the high seas is simply a form of escape from a humdrum and powerless life, one in which you can effect nothing. It’s the perfect end to a collection of shark stories in fact, because there’s no getting out of the water when you are the shark.
Midnight and Moonshine, the first collaboration I read between Australian writers Lisa L. Hannett and Angela Slatter, had about it something of the mystical and mythopoeic, a quality of timelessness. Their latest collaboration, a collection of four stories linked by themes of gender identity and the objectification of women, is a far grittier and more polemical work, as the title THE FEMALE FACTORY (Twelfth Planet Press eBook, 160pp, au$5.95) might suggest.
After an introduction by Amal El-Mohtar, the collection proper begins with ‘Vox’ in which young couple Kate and Nick are desperate for a child, so desperate that they seek the help of Dr Good and his Delayed Gestation Units. When Kate has triplets, two of them have to be surrendered as the couple can’t afford all three. But in this reality the souls of “surrendered” children are kept in corporate storage facilities, and Kate believes that she can talk to the two she has lost, her sense of guilt driving her to seek their attention at the cost of neglecting the baby she actually has. It seems to me that what this story does is combine the plight of a childless couple with the concept of Electronic Voice Phenomenon, the latter here given a scientific and commercial rationale. The idea is a fascinating one, that unused souls can hang around waiting for an opening, and that the living can communicate with them through mechanical devices, though as far as that goes we only have Kate’s word that communication takes place, and it’s established early on in the story that she speaks to inanimate objects. The authority and emotional power of the story lies in the sense of desperation felt by the couple at their childless state, the measures to which they are driven by the desire to conform to some social desiderata, with the subtext that in trying for something more you can lose sight of what you already have. Kate wants a perfect, guilt-free existence, but that is not possible given her actions, the choices she is forced to make, and if she is innocent before then that’s no longer the case as neglect of baby Audra condemns her in the eyes of the reader.
‘Baggage’ is the story of Robyn, who has been taken by the Atwood Corporation and transformed into a glorified brood mare for their rich clientele. Her handler takes her to the estate of an elderly billionaire, where Robyn’s status as little more than a prostitute is brought home to her with full force, prompting an act of rebellion. At times, with the back story of how Robyn is taught to act and dress, given elocution lessons and made to learn social skills, ‘Baggage’ made me think of Pretty Woman, but Robyn’s partner is no Richard Gere and ultimately the story is much harsher than the saccharine sweet portrayal of prostitution served up by Hollywood. This is a story about using people as property, that women’s bodies are not their own; about the dreadful ways in which the super-rich act simply because they can, and at the end I cheered Robyn as she made her escape, even though there is something of duplicity about her too, in that she presumably knew what she was getting into when she signed up with Atwood. Ultimately it’s a pseudo-Marxist tale, a story of the worker taking back the means of reproduction.
‘All the Other Revivals’ is set in a world where people who feel they are trapped in the wrong bodies can change their gender by diving to the bottom of an isolated body of water. When his girlfriend Andrea takes the swim, Jeff can’t help but see her decision as reflecting on him, a judgement that he wasn’t man enough for her, and so the victim for his spite is the weak and effeminate Baron. A gentle person, Baron has always been an outsider, picked on by others and judged as not masculine enough, a disappointment to his macho father. Told from Baron’s perspective, the story explores notions of gender identity, of what it means to be a man or woman, and how superficial such things are, the distinction between primary and secondary/cultural gender differences. Directly confronting issues of abuse and bullying, it is a heartfelt and moving piece, one that pleads for a more fluid idea of gender and a greater toleration for those who do not fit the societal template, or perhaps for an abandonment of such templates altogether.
Finally we have title story ‘The Female Factory’, which is set in an institution that is home to criminals, some of them no more than young children, all under the draconian rule of Matron Welles. While the staff jockey for position and pursue their own obsessions, including the doctor who experiments on corpses, a group of children combine to create a mother figure to head up their new family. This is a fascinating story, one that in its imagery touches on the Frankenstein archetype, and with the ups and downs of fortune that the characters experience is thoroughly engrossing. The Bridewell institution is a singularly minatory environment, a prison camp of sorts with its own unique logic, with rules and regulations that it can be fatal to break, but at the bottom of it all, for the young inmates, there remains a smidgen of hope, a feeling that only the irrational can provide when all else fails. Ultimately, it seems to say, gender identity is what we wish it to be, something summoned forth by our own implacable yearning, and the mothers of our own devising will sometimes have more to offer than those inflicted on us by the tyranny of biology and social constraints.
Similar themes, though less overtly, are explored in Slatter’s solo work OF SORROW AND SUCH (Tor.com pb, 160pp, $12.99), a novella or short novel set in the same world as the author’s Bitterwood Bible and Sourdough collections, a fantasy realm in which magic works and women are the last bastions of scholarship. It fits rather neatly into the overall pattern of Slatter’s invented version of reality, and readers of the previous books will have fun identifying characters and events, seeing how they slot into the grand design, but at the same time it’s a book that works wonderfully well as a standalone adventure, with no previous experience needed to enjoy all its thrills and spills.
“Widow” Patience Gideon lives in the town of Edda’s Meadow and is its wise woman, the one people consult for herbal cures and love philtres, and sometimes more than that. Patience has problems with adopted daughter Gilly, who is going down a path to love that will surely lead her into trouble. Also currently sheltering at Patience’s house is Selke, a wandering witch who is being pursued by those who hate and fear her kind, and Selke’s presence proves fortuitous when her abilities bring about the cure of a wounded shapeshifter. Matters are further complicated by the arrival in town of Balthazar Cotton, a man from Patience’s past. With the visit of ecclesiastical inquisitors and the capture of a shifter who may betray them all, things reach a head, and Patience must take drastic action if those she cares about are to survive. And there are two or three more subplots at least – Slatter does not short change the reader when it comes to narrative complications.
This is very much a milieu in which the lives and actions of women are central, with their role primarily that of preserving knowledge while the men are, invariably, bellicose and humourless, blustering about making everyone else do what they wish for their own good, and never asking anyone what they actually want. We see this in the figure of Pastor Alhgren, wishing to poison his wife so that he can acquire a younger model; we see it in the person of Balthazar Cotton, who always calculates his advantage, even when the life of his brother is concerned; most obviously we notice it in the ecclesiastical men who pursue a personal vendetta wrapped up in protestations of principle. And, in nearly all of these cases, the women are accused not because they have done anything wrong, but for the reason that their ideas on behaviour and rightness do not coincide with those of the men. The Archbishop of Lodellan doesn’t really care that Selke is a witch, though that is the pretext used by those who pursue her in his name; he is offended because she won’t use what power she has in the manner he wishes. Similarly Beau Markham doesn’t really care that Patience is a wise woman, only that her intervention prevented him getting his way with stepdaughter Gilly and caused him to lose face. Not wishing to give you the impression Of Sorrow and Such is anti-men, let me note that not all of Slatter’s male figure are tainted with obstinacy and fake machismo, with the boy Sandor totally loyal to Patience and her daughter, while the town constable, a previous bed partner of Patience, has the sense to feel guilty regarding what he is compelled to do, and one of the other men is capable of redemption. It’s simply that the negative qualities Slatter wishes to dissect are more often the province of men, or of those in positions of power (and in this world, that means men). Similarly, while in Slatter’s scheme of things they show more loyalty to each other, not all of the women are portrayed as saints, with Flora’s self-centredness putting everyone in danger and prompting Patience’s most violent act. While all of the characters are well drawn and fully rounded, it is in Patience that Slatter excels, allowing us to get to know and like this woman, with her wisdom, and caring, protective nature, her physicality as well as her spiritual side, and then, having done all this, showing that she can also be totally ruthless and her enemies will not be long for this earth. She is a person in whom opposites mingle, compassionate but at the same time possessed of a pragmatism that on occasion can seem indistinguishable from cruelty, and all the more believable for that. Patience is as multifaceted and rounded as the world in which she is set, like a gem set in a work of ornate metalwork, and in her character she reflects that world, both good and bad, while offering a contrast to the hypocrisy and cant of its ostensible rulers.
Of Sorrow and Such is a superb work of fiction, one that contains within its pages a gripping story, but at the same time has much to tell us about sexual politics and gender identity, and the ways in which bad people behave, the warped logic they use to justify doing so, and I loved every word of it. Without doubt, Slatter is at the top of her game in this story and fast carving out a reputation for herself as one of the most original and rewarding writers on the genre scene.
THE WEIRD WEST AND THE PICARESQUE: MOLLY TANZER
I first encountered the work of Molly Tanzer back in 2013 when I was on a jury to decide who should receive that year’s British Fantasy Award for Best Newcomer and her A Pretty Mouth was in contention. A collection of linked stories chronicling the history and (mis)adventures of the Calipash family, and with its gonzo invention and irreverent use of Lovecraftian tropes it impressed me mightily, and I promised myself that at some point in the future I would become more acquainted with this writer’s oeuvre. Fortunately, when you’re a reviewer, promises like that are easy to keep.
VERMILION (Word Horde pb, 386pp, $14.55) is Tanzer’s first novel, and it’s tagged as “The Adventures of Lou Merriwether, Psychopomp”. The novel is set in the United States in the year 1870, but we soon discover that it’s not quite the world we know from viewing The History Channel. In this reality certain animal species, such as bears and sea lions, are intelligent and communicate with human beings, negotiate treaties and alliances with them. It was ursine intervention that helped the North to win the Civil War, and the fallout from that has hindered the human push east in a way that didn’t occur in our timeline. Anyway, Lou Merriwether, the daughter of an English father and a Chinese mother, earns her living as a psychopomp, helping the spirits of the dead move on to the next plane of existence. Lou’s mother asks her to investigate when a number of Chinese men go missing. She finds evidence that they are being recruited to work in the east, most probably on a railway line, but that doesn’t quite make sense as there is an embargo on railway building, and then the body of one of the missing arrives in a crate and manifests as a reanimated corpse that Lou must deal with. Various clues point to Estes Park in Colorado, where Doctor Panacea is running a sanatorium for rich people, and so Lou goes undercover, travelling east and posing as a potential client. It’s the start of an adventure that brings her into conflict with vampires and a dragon, that sees Lou reunited with old friends and gaining a sidekick.
To cut to the chase, this is a wild romp of a book, one with many pleasures for the reader. Foremost among those, Tanzer setting the tone in the opening passage with a vivid description of the Rocky Mountain backdrop, is the author’s sense of place and ability to convey that. From the vast spaces and wide open skies of Colorado through to the fog shrouded streets of San Francisco and bustling environs of Chinatown, she is adept at bringing the landscape of her story to life on the page, plunging readers into the geography, immersing us in the atmosphere, so that at times it begins to seem as if the landscape is itself another character in the author’s cast.
And of those characters, as is only fitting, Lou Merriwether is the jewel in Tanzer’s crown, a female adventurer in all but name, though she would hardly recognise herself as such, soul kin and contemporary of those Victorian society ladies who dressed as men and set off to explore the world. Lou is a well of contradictions – supremely confident in her profession, an extremely capable individual, wise beyond her nineteen years, but at the same with a personal life that is as messy and mixed up as anything the rest of us have to offer. She’s at odds with her mother over the death of her father, and her love life is a tangle of missed opportunities and misread signals. These qualities make us identify with and believe in her all the more. In addition to all that, with her mixed ancestry, Lou is a person with one foot in the oriental world and another in the occidental, and subject to the prejudices and judgements of both, while her position as a formidable woman in a patriarchal society adds yet more complications. Lou’s response to all this is to cultivate an air of bemused toleration, except in personal matters and those of social justice, so that she finds ways to work round other people’s problems, to make allowances for machismo and xenophobia, while certainly not condoning such attitudes. And this is seen most obviously in relation to the sexuality of others, with no big hissy fits when a woman is attracted to her, or when an old boyfriend turns out to be gay, or during a visit to a brothel catering for a rather exclusive clientele. In her dealings with other people, for most of the time Lou is the personification of a live and let live philosophy. Only cruelty gets her dander up.
It’s this easy going nature that lets Lou get so close to Shai, her companion on the trip to Estes Park, and the other major character in this book. Outwardly a cultured dandy he soon shows that he has a dark side, and can be a ruthless killer when circumstances necessitate. And yet as his back story is revealed, the times and ordeals through which he has lived, Lou finds herself both attracted to him and slightly uneasy about that attraction. I suspect that in him she sees much of herself, or what she could have become had things turned out differently. In the interaction between the two of them, Tanzer gives us a complex and engrossing relationship, one charged with an underlying eroticism. In brief, they have chemistry. Shai is a man with many secrets, which Lou discovers over the course of the narrative, but perhaps his defining characteristic is his loyalty to long time employer and lover Doctor Panacea. And, for the reader, finding out which way Shai will jump when, inevitably, Lou and Panacea clash, is one of the things that will keep us reading.
Panacea is a memorable villain, a monster who affronts our ideas of what is right and acceptable, who will do anything to get his own way. In some particulars he reminded me of Cougar and Dark from Bradbury’s classic Something Wicked This Way Comes, the same quality of showmanship and drive to corrupt others. His evil grows in stature as the book progresses, so that while initially he might have seemed nothing more than a quack selling health tonic and cures to the gullible, what eventually emerges is something far more sinister. Yet for all that, at the end of the day there is a rather crass and commercial motive behind his actions, so that we can wonder if Tanzer intended his person to embody a critique of venture capitalism and what will be done to turn a profit.
These three, the good, the bad, and the could swing either way, are only the leading lights in a wonderful ensemble cast, with other players that include a Pinkerton agent, a bear official who befriends Lou on a train journey, a rich young girl with an unlikely ambition, assorted henchmen and their prisoners, former lovers and their new companions, each one drawn with skill and impressive depth, so that they all help to drive the plot along.
While there are certainly horrific moments in the narrative, including a torture scene that was appropriately distressing, and genre trappings such as restless spirits, vampires, and a dragon, this is not a horror novel as such, but more appropriately classified as a Weird Western. Imagine if you will Big Trouble in Little China transplanted to the American west of John Ford, only with intelligent sea lions and talking bears thrown into the mix, allowing Tanzer further scope to comment on the foibles and perfidy of mankind from an outsider perspective. Classify it how you will, this book was immense fun, gleefully subverting genre templates and blurring the boundaries at will, and at the end of the story there is plenty of scope left for a sequel, which is a possibility that pleases me immensely, as Lou Merriwether and her cronies are simply too much fun for just the one adventure.
THE PLEASURE MERCHANT (Lazy Fascist Press pb, 430pp, $16.95), Tanzer’s second novel, flying out the door hard on the heels of her first, is subtitled “The Modern Pygmalion” and set in a Regency London that’s notable for its lack of talking bears. We are introduced to the character of Tom Dawne, a wigmaker’s apprentice, who loses his position and sees his hopes of marriage to his master’s daughter Hizzy crash and burn through no fault of his own. The wealthy Mr Bewit, who is somewhat implicated in his downfall, takes pity on the young man, and Tom finds a comfortable berth as a manservant in the Bewit household. It is a somewhat peculiar establishment, with rakehell son Callow off somewhere on the continent and Mr Bewit mourning but never speaking of the fate of his daughter Alula. The dominant figure in the household is the cousin Hallux Dryden, a self-proclaimed scientist who never refrains from voicing his opinion on any matter and exercises an unhealthy level of control over his beautiful wife Sabina. Tom soon becomes a favourite of Mr Bewit, with all the privileges that confers, including romantic dalliances with young society ladies who don’t realise that he is a servant. However, with the return of Callow Bewit his position becomes precarious, which is when he meets the young woman Miss Rasa and her master Mangum Blythe, the pleasure merchant of the title, an upper class fixer upper who can arrange anything for the right price. When shit hits the fan at the Bewit household Tom finds himself a man of substance and determines to pursue a relationship with Rasa, regardless of what or who stands in his way. Specifically, regardless of Mangum Blythe. It’s a bad judgement call.
Mostly the story is told from the perspective of Tom, but there’s a frame narrative which claims the book as the work of Rasa, now a pleasure merchant and recording events many years after they took place, and the final passages concern her deeds. Again, though there is much here that is horrific, especially in the influence exercised by the abominable Hallux Dryden over Sabina, this is not correctly speaking a horror novel; it would more readily be classed as a picaresque, or perhaps a post-modern work in the same vein as Barth’s The Sot-Weed Factor. It’s a fast paced romp of a story, with a complex and clever plot, and a wry humour and mocking sense of irony underlying much of the narrative, while once again Tanzer’s descriptive skills come into play, taking us from the country houses of the aristocracy to the cloistered confines of Regency coffee houses and the cobbled streets of London.
And while you can certainly take the narrative at face value, and read it simply for the pleasure of an engaging story well told, Tanzer has a feminist stance worn lightly on her sleeve. Tom Dawne is what I guess in modern parlance would be described as a bit of a lad, treating the women in the book as objects to gratify his lust, lying to get his way with servants and young ladies of good breeding alike, and caring not a fig that he has sworn his heart to Hizzy (and yet, he is annoyed when, after being ignored for a while, she turns to another man – Tom is the master of the double standard). This immorality carries over into other aspects of his life, so that he is entirely ruthless in consolidating his position in the household of Mr Bewit, removing any who oppose him or stand in his way. The anger he feels towards Rasa is superficially rooted in what he considers her lack of appreciation for what he has done for her, which he regards as ingratitude, but in reality all he is doing is dressing up a form of churlishness brought on by her refusal to act as he wishes. And when he embarks on his campaign against Mangum Blythe, Tom determines to strike through using a woman, indifferent to what anguish he might cause the one he is using as a weapon. Tom is, in not so modern parlance, a complete bounder, and there is plenty of gratification to be had in seeing him get his comeuppance, undone by his own hubris, though what needs to be remembered here is that the story is being told by Rasa, and the thoughts and motives attributed to him are those that she reveals and not necessarily the reality. It is her interpretation of his behaviour, just as we interpret all that she discloses. And to be fair, she does allow that he has a moral streak in him, not immediately seizing on the wrong course, and needing to justify his actions to himself, even if his reasons are invariably specious. He is not a two dimensional monster, but a fully rounded character, a flawed human being.
Repellent though it may be, Tom’s behaviour is nothing compared to that of Hallux Dryden, a monster in human form, who wishes to shape Sabina to fit his desires and cares nothing for what she wants, who sees her simply as a tabula rasa on which he can write his own idea of how women should behave (most of which involves deferring to and constantly praising her husband). Sabina is to be a Stepford Wife, reduced to the status of a doll by the mesmeric hold her husband has over her. Central to this aspect of the story is the objectification of women, the ways in which men dominate and shape them, without so much as a by your leave.
The relationship between Dryden and Sabina is mirrored in that between Mangum Blythe and Rasa (her name, which he conferred, is a reference to the tabula rasa, or blank slate). But while Mangum does indeed exercise considerable influence over his protégé, he uses it more wisely, always encouraging Rasa to realise her own potential, to decide what she wishes to do rather than simply pander to his authority and ego. They are more like business partners than anything else, though Mangum is the senior. A suave, highly educated and cultured individual, sexually precocious and seeing no reason not to take his pleasure where he will (yet with a strict moral code to which he adheres come what may), Blythe is the genius loci of this novel, its presiding spirit, even though he is seldom at the centre of the action. He is a man who believes in pleasure, for himself and others, and who has made its pursuit his life’s work and career, though interpreting it in more philosophical terms than empty hedonism. In many ways he is the ideal of those libertines found in the pages of the Marquis de Sade, with all of their virtues and none of their vices, including a regrettable tendency to lecture the reader. Blythe doesn’t lecture, but leads by example. He does not seek to dominate women, because he does not fear them or need the validation of others.
These three very different men, and Rasa’s reactions to them, are the hard nugget at the centre of this dazzling novel, and they allow Tanzer to comment on attitudes, good and bad, that are still far too prevalent in our own society more than two hundred years after the events described in its pages. It is a remarkable achievement, a stunning novel from a writer at the very start of her career, one who is not afraid to take risks and go off in unexpected directions, to give us alarums and excursions. In literary terms, Tanzer herself is a pleasure merchant of the first order, offering us the wares we crave, even though we don’t realise so until after we have fallen under her spell and become addicted to the unique visions that are her stock in trade. There is much to look forward to, and long may the addiction last.
Q&A WITH MOLLY TANZER
Your first two novels, Vermilion and The Pleasure Merchant, are set in the past, 19th century America and 18th century Britain respectively, and in a previous interview you stated “my mind tends to stray to historical locations and settings”. Why do you think that is? Is it simply a matter of novelty, or are there things you can accomplish through the use of a historical perspective that couldn’t be achieved with a contemporary setting?
I grew up watching Star Trek: TNG, so I think the idea of using an alternate setting as a lens through which to focus a story (and/or a social critique) about the present is just in my blood and bones. As I don’t gravitate to the science fictional, or even the true fantastical, the historical past is a perfect way for me to get a touch of otherness while still having things be familiar enough to be relatable. I also enjoy the challenge of writing historical fiction. Not just for me, as a writer and researcher, but for my characters. I love modern mysteries and other genre works that make liberal use of cell phones and other technologies, but I take pleasure in writing about time periods where dropping a friend a note could in itself be an ordeal. The frustration with the everyday is something we all feel, in every time period, so channelling that but in different ways can be very fun as a writer. Hopefully, it’s fun for my readers, too!
What sort of research do you undertake to make your historical setting feel convincing? Given that certain elements of Vermilion ground the book in a fantastical alternate version of the historical USA do you consider verisimilitude important or is it subservient to the demands of the plot?
Verisimilitude is important to me, but only in certain ways. With Vermilion, for example, I did a lot of research into experience of Chinese-Americans of the mid-1800s, and tried to be as honest to that population as I could, especially as I was coming to it as an outsider. I also somewhat obsessively researched things like how far a mule cart would go in a day; how long it would take to get from Oakland to Wyoming by train, what Estes Park was like in the 1870s; I tried to use Cantonese (where I could) instead of Mandarin, and so on and so forth. I didn’t use half of what I uncovered, but I find that a judicious sprinkling of accuracy allows me to take useful liberties elsewhere and still retain a period feel.
In the end, however, I do feel story must rule research. There were very few women and children in San Francisco’s Chinatown in the 1870s; I was totally fine representing not one but two families with mothers (Lou’s, and Bo’s). Mandarin words that were significantly more familiar to readers than their Cantonese counterparts, like qi, I kept to keep the text accessible. I also invented fantastical-historical conditions that created a recession, and a lack of Western development, to make the setting a bit more “wild”.
That said, sometimes I find something while researching that just opens up my imagination and unlocks a plot point. When I was first planning out Vermilion, I learned that the Transcontinental Railroad was originally going to route through Denver, but then they elected to go with Cheyenne, Wyoming. That gave me a great reason to have had Dr. Panacea decide to put his sanatorium in the Colorado Rockies, only to have it fail to thrive, which gave the whole place the sort of lonely, isolated feel – exactly what I was after.
In Vermilion psychopomp Lou Merriwether encounters a number of supernatural entities, but they are grounded in eastern occultism/spiritualism rather than that of the west. What are the main differences between the oriental and occidental traditions? In Chinese culture how does the attitude of people to the supernatural compare to that of the non-Orientals in your work?
Well, not everything Lou encounters is straight out of Mr Vampire or A Chinese Ghost Story. She certainly deals with geung si, but she hears tell of creatures like banshees. She also encounters a classically Byronic vampire! Regardless, your question is a big one, and as such it’s tough for me to answer. I’m not sure what to say with regards to the “main differences” between the traditions you mention; I have found that most cultures use the supernatural to explain what cannot be explained. Horror is fundamentally about dealing with the irrational, after all, whether we’re talking fantastical horror (ghosts and monsters) or the all-too-real (serial killers; Equus).
My hope with Vermilion was to present a world where everyone, regardless of who they were, dealt with the supernatural with a sort of “ho-hum” manner – where ghosts and whatever else are just another part of daily life. Lou is exceptional only because of her training, her mental ability to cope with the uncanny, and her resolve to stick with performing the physically demanding aspects of psychopompery on a daily basis. She has no special powers. At the end of the day, she’s just doing her job like any other sucker, anywhere in the world, on any given day.
Earlier I mentioned the fantastical aspects of Vermilion, and specifically I was thinking of the talking bears and their society, and also the sea lions. While vampires, ghosts etc could all be worked into a “realistic” setting, the society of bears pushes the book over into fantasy. Why did you decide to add these elements? What do they bring to the mix, so that the novel wouldn’t work as well without them? How conscious were you of the possibility of anthropomorphism, or wasn’t this a concern?
The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was the first novel I read on my own, and since then, I’ve always been looking for that wardrobe – for a door into Narnia, where animals talk, and humans frolic with the mythological. So, on some level I wanted to have talking animals in the book because I love them, always have and always will.
But, more importantly (I love a lot of things that didn’t make it into Vermilion), the bears and sea lions were intended to serve a few mechanical functions. One, I hoped they would create a sense of otherness within the everyday that I wanted for the setting of the novel. Two, the bears in particular gave me the opportunity to explain the recession and lack of economic development in the west that ought to have been a part of the landscape, were the novel true to history.
As for anthropomorphism… I suppose (hearkening back to your previous question) I wanted the bears and sea lions to be like everything else in Vermilion. Whether it’s ghosts, humans, monsters, talking animals, or anyone or anything that might occupy the margins in between those categories, they’re fundamentally understandable, if one only takes the time to try and understand them.
You’ve said that the 1985 film Mr Vampire was an inspiration for Vermilion, and on your website, among other things, you describe yourself as “a Hong Kong cinema enthusiast”. What is the appeal of such films for you? How do you feel they feed into your writing?
Oh, Hong Kong cinema is the best! My personal tastes run to martial arts films (of which Mr Vampire is one – Lam Ching-ying, the Taoist priest, was a good friend of Bruce Lee’s, and appears in The Big Boss, Fist of Fury, and Enter the Dragon) where astonishing feats of kung fu are an everyday occurrence, and mastery is possible for everyone to achieve; where love, passion, violence, fear, drama, and comedy can coexist harmoniously in the same film. I love the wild abandon of so many HKC films, that kitchen-sink sensibility.
Vermilion, similarly, is a kitchen-sink novel in many ways – I wanted it to be a bildungsroman, a love story, a Western, a mystery, a horror novel, a tragedy…gosh, just everything. Life isn’t ever just one thing, and I don’t feel art should be, either.
In Vermilion racism is a theme, given Lou’s Chinese ancestry, and in both books, but more especially in The Pleasure Merchant, sexism and misogyny are addressed, negative attitudes that still have a hold in our own time. Was this intentional on your part, one of the things you wished to deal with in the books, or was it an afterthought, something that simply arose naturally out of the historical setting? To what degree should the writer be a social commentator?
I would say it arose naturally in both instances. I didn’t want to gloss over the conditions of historical reality when writing in the historical past, even an historical past with a fantastical edge, as in Vermilion. It seems dishonest to me. I tend to dislike historical fiction where everything’s fine, nothing’s gross, and no one is mean, so I didn’t want to channel that. One of my goals, when writing, is to write books I’d like to read, after all!
As to whether a writer should be a social commentator, it scarcely matters, because writers always are, whether they mean to be or not. To write is to present one’s self – and in many ways, betray one’s self. Even studiously avoiding commenting on one thing or another is to make a comment; to show a perspective. I’m reminded of the Hugo controversy of 2015, where so many angry writers blogged about their longing for those halcyon days when writers could be rewarded for just writing “a good story”; when speculative fiction wasn’t social commentary. Of course, that was only their fantasy; speculative fiction has always contained social commentary. A fantasy novel about bold thewsy barbarians saving wilting but sharp-tongued maidens is just as much about identity politics and gender roles as anything being nominated for a Hugo these days.
Can you tell us something about the inspiration for The Pleasure Merchant? Are characters such as Tom Dawne, Hallux Dryden, and Mangum Blythe modelled on any historical figures? What are there antecedents, if any?
I’ve had people ask if Mangum Blythe was based on any historical figure, but no…except maybe John Steed, since he’ll always be the ideal gentleman to me. It’s funny – for some reason, I was thinking a lot about The Avengers when I wrote The Pleasure Merchant; the title is actually inspired by one of my favourite episodes, ‘The Fear Merchants’, and an earlier draft had Mr Blythe running a Hellfire Club, like in ‘A Touch of Brimstone’ (I decided in the end to keep his scenes more intimate).
As for Hallux Dryden, he is in part a parody of Thomas Day: poet, philosopher, and mad (social) scientist. Thomas Day wrote The History of Sandford and Merton, the children’s book, and also co-wrote ‘The Dying Negro’, an anti-slavery poem that was very popular in the late 18th century. He also, after several unhappy love affairs, decided he was done wooing women, and instead illegally adopted two tween orphans, spirited them away to France, and tried to train them to be his ideal wife according to the principles put forward by Rousseau in his novel Emile. I should note that Day didn’t intend to marry both; it was just an “an heir and a spare” mentality. Anyway, it didn’t work out. In spite of teaching them astronomy and writing and mathematics and dripping hot candle wax on them and firing guns at them and everything else he did, neither of the girls ended up marrying him. The entire story is told beautifully in Wendy Moore’s pop history of the whole affair, How to Create the Perfect Wife, which is a spectacular read. I don’t want to give too much away re: the connection between Dryden and Day, so suffice it to say I think for both new readers and those who have finished the book the connection will be fairly obvious.
Tom…poor Tom. He’s a complicated figure. His attitudes are intentionally a commentary on the “nice guy” mentality we see so often, the Duckie type who thinks he is owed romantic love (or at least sex) for “being there” for a female friend. He’s also me. His nebulous ambition, his flitting from thing to thing without knowing what he wants, his voracious appetite for what he feels is owed to him… Tom, like Henry from another historical fiction of mine, A Pretty Mouth, is in many ways an amalgamation of parts of myself I don’t especially like. Thus, I decided to torment and expose him for 400 pages…
Authorship of The Pleasure Merchant is ascribed to Rasa, but much of the story is told from the perspective of Tom Dawne and Rasa cannot know his inner thoughts, only outward actions, and not all of those. As Rasa herself concedes – “I have had to fill in any missing details with likely-seeming falsifications”. What then made you take the decision to use an unreliable narrator? What purpose is served by our knowing that Tom’s attitudes and motives are not necessarily his own but those ascribed to him by Rasa?
Rasa is a complicated figure, an honest liar if you will. That said, the on-the-page acknowledgement of the novel’s rather Gordian relationship with the truth is pure 18th century convention as much as it is a reveal of Rasa’s simultaneous obsessive need to confess what happened as well as the intense discomfort experienced over finally getting up the nerve to confess it.
The book is really a character study in relief – Tom is the star; Rasa, the subject. As to why I decided to do things that way… I suppose it was because Rasa isn’t the sort of person who would voluntarily hang themselves out to dry. Of course, that’s what happens, when everything comes out in the end – when the final admission finally comes that it’s largely a fantastical work – and I hoped that would call a lot of the novel into question.
Basically, I hoped that readers would spend the novel despising and identifying with Tom, only to realise that whatever they settle on, in regards to their feelings about him and what happens to him, they are required ultimately to make their own decision about his merits. Fundamentally the reader will never know what’s really real. Which, of course, is all we can ever do, with people, whether we meet them briefly, know them for years, or just hear tell of them…
There’s an element of humour in both books, and you’ve said “I tend toward irreverent treatments of my subjects, even when they are horrifying”. Do you feel that horror and comedy mix well together? Isn’t there a danger of trivialising something that is quite terrifying by adding a comedic element? Is it simply a matter of choosing your moments?
I do feel they mix well. I always cite Stephen Graham Jones on this, because he’s brilliant, and it affected me deeply when he once said that humour and horror are biologically the same: when we’re frightened or amused, pressure builds in the body, and it comes out as either a laugh or a scream. This theory works for me, because it explains pretty perfectly why we might laugh at a gory murder in a horror movie, or feel left wanting to scream after a particularly pointed bit of comedy.
I’ve never worried about trivialising something by using humour… I see it more as a pressure valve. I’ve never been the sort of person who can take anything seriously for too long. I’m the one who cracks a joke to relieve the tension, or says something inappropriate at the weirdest moment, distracting everyone. I remember, the day my father died, after a long and deeply terrible battle with cancer, the funeral home people came to take him to be cremated. I couldn’t help but notice that one of the guys was seriously cute. I chatted with him a bit, and he was very nice, and I caught my mom giving me some massive side-eye as he departed. I just shrugged, and said “What, he’s hot.” She looked at me in astonishment, and said, “You are really sick!” and then burst out laughing. We still cried a lot after that, but for a moment we got to be ourselves; enjoy an eye in this huge terrifying hurricane of grief and pain.
Maybe it is about choosing one’s moment – comedic timing and all that. Or maybe it’s just there’s a risk either way – if applying a bit of humour may ruin the moment or trivialise something, when a work of art is just dark dark dark I think there’s a serious risk that your audience will just roll their eyes and say “enough with the grim already, we get it, [whatever] is sooooo scary or sooooo horrible.”
Your work has been described as Lovecraftian, but when talking of your influences other than HPL I haven’t noticed anyone attributing anything specifically horror-generic to your work. What horror genre writers have been an influence on you?
While I’m proud to be labelled a horror author, it’s always funny to be because I didn’t come up reading horror…mostly fantasy, and of a high or epic persuasion. These days, I still read a lot of fantasy, but more “grimdark” than high or epic – Joe Abercrombie is probably my favourite, and I typically drop whatever I’m reading whenever something new comes out by him.
The horror I read is usually pretty “lite”, just like what I write. For example, I’d say Lemony Snicket has been hugely influential on me. A Series of Unfortunate Events was and is one of my favourite horror-gothics, and his recent series, All The Wrong Questions, was delightful horror-crime. If you’ll indulge me by considering Roald Dahl a horror author, I’ll cite him, too. Even in his children’s books, I can’t think of anyone who really captures the darkness of mankind more than he was able to.
The first horror novel I read was Interview With The Vampire, so I’ll name-drop Anne Rice. (I’m currently reading her latest Beauty novel, so it’s fair to say she’s stuck with me.) And Mary Shelley of course… Frankenstein has stuck with me all my life, since I read it for the first time in 9th grade. Since then I’ve re-read it for pleasure and in the classroom, taught it to undergrads, and I’m currently collaborating on a story where Justine appears.
As for modern authors I admire, and have been influenced by in one way or another, as well as Stephen Graham Jones I’ll cite Carrie Vaughn, Livia Llewellyn, Jonathan L. Howard, Caitlin Kiernan, David Nickle, Jeff Ford, Nick Mamatas, and Cherie Priest.
What can we expect to see from you in the near future?
Most of what I have coming out this year so far is editorial in nature. Summer, my first anthology drops, Swords v. Cthulhu, co-edited with Jesse Bullington. As you can probably tell from the title, it’s an anthology of S&S tales mixed up with Mythos elements. I’m really proud of how that came together. Also debuting this summer is my first magazine, Congress, which will be “thoughtful erotica”. I’m reading now for it, and I’m excited to see stories coming in that range from horror, fantasy, SF to literary fiction. I’ve worked on magazines for years – Fantasy, Lightspeed, The Big Click – but this is my first gig actually running a magazine.
In terms of writing, 2016 will see the reprinting of my novella Rumbullion: An Apostrophe. Rumbullion was first published in my limited edition collection for Egaeus Press, Rumbullion and Other Liminal Libations. That edition is sold out, so I’m glad the novella will be available as an affordable paperback for anyone who missed it the first time around. It’s one of my favourite things I’ve written. Tangentially related to Vermilion, it’s set in the 18th century and is a Rashomon-like story involving the Count of St Germain, who spends a weekend at a house in the English countryside, and departs leaving everyone confused as to what really happened.