The Book: Darkness Crawls Apace
A new book published by BookLocker containing 17 tales of the supernatural from vampires to werewolves to magicians. Some of these stories feature creatures never encountered before. The tales describe the adventures of a Reverend Montague Wynnter and his trusted companion Sir Charles Berwick.
Reverend Montague Wynnter and his bemused sidekick, Sir Charles Berwick, have got to be amongst the best characters to come along since Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson. These are detectives of the supernatural and get involved in all manner of mysteries. Montague Wynnter is a striking character. Page turning stuff. I highly recommend anyone interested in suparnatural stories to read this book.
- Ulrike Ochs
Interview
The main characters of the stories are Reverend Montague Wynnter and Sir Charles Berwick. What are the real aspirations that influenced the creation of these two characters?
Reverend Montague Wynnter came almost fully grown into the scene. I was reading a book about the Highgate Vampire, a vampire that got into the news in the 70s, and in it the book mentioned a Reverend Montague Summers as being a believer so I researched Summers and Wynnter is based on him. I was originally going to use Summers as the character but two things stopped me – firstly, Summers died in 1948 still within the liable period of 70 years or so, so I didn’t feel free to use the man’s name and when I changed the name I also completely took over the character. Secondly, Summers was a great wit, something I can only aspire to, and I didn’t feel I could do the real man justice in my writing. But I do use elements of Summers in the character of Wynnter – his way of dressing, his hairstyle his absolute belief in the supernatural. Sir Charles Berwick is a total fabrication but he is based on me to some extent, I would and have done some of the silly things he gets up to in the stories, but more importantly I needed a foil for Montague Wynnter, Berwick was only going to be in one story but I liked the character so much that he became Wynnters Dr Watson, recounting all the adventures the two have.
How would you imagine a film taken from your book?
I don’t really imagine a film from the book, I do see a series of half hour BBC programmes though with the sort of feel that Lord Peter Wimsey shows have especially as they are based in the same period, the 1920s.
What is writing to you, and what does being a writer mean? How did it change you?
Writing is very important to me, it is my main hobby and I spend most of my time on it, it is very important to me but I feel I am growing as a writer with each word I put down, I hope in ten years from now I will be a much better writer than I am now. It changed me in the sense that I now look at things differently, I am always looking for the writer’S angle to a problem or something that happens – how could a story be made from that, that sort of thing.
What does the process of writing involve for you?
I mnúst admit I write in a way most teachers of writing say you shouldn’t, hat is I wait for inspiration. I take notes in a small A5 pad which I take everywhere and keep by my bed and when an idea comes to mind I scribble it down. When I have the full story in my head I then write it over one or two nights, I always work at night as I have two small children, I usually write a couple of thousand words. I write it complete, ask the wife to read the story and then I edit it. I’m not very good at editing and it takes some time, I get bored with rereading the storied time and time again so I often need help from my wife, Ulli, to edit the stuff. I don’t think this method would suit writing a novel which I am planning to do next. Although the bare bone sof the plan have been done using the pad and pen again. Why did you choose BookLocker to publish the book was P.O.D. the way you wanted to go? Like all writers I would prefer to have been published by a trade publisher but that can take years to go though a few publishers and the book didn’t seem to match anything publishers around were doing at the moment, and of course even with a trade publisher I would have to promote the book. I sent the finished book to BookLocker which although a POD publisher turns down 90% of books submitted to them (they turned down a couple of mine before so I know that is true) and print the books at a reasonable price and I felt I would get a good deal from going with POD. In the long run we will see, but at least the books won’t be printed and remaindered to be sold in cheap book shops for which I get no royalties and I feel like I am saving a few trees as well. Also the immediacy of POD is appealing, once the artwork for the cover is done and a final edit it can be up and on sale at amazon in two weeks which is much quicker than trade publication. I suppose the question will have to be asked at a later time when I have had mor experience of the POD process.
Do you belong to any writer’s groups?
I don’t, although I am on a few newsletter groups. I am looking into joining some online writers groups but then I received advice saying it wasn’t the best thing as critiques of one’s work could be adverse for any number of reasons not necessarily to do with the quality of the writing. Other people have had other experiences of writers groups so I am still open on whether I should join one.
Have you connections with writers?
Well in my immediate circle of friends there are three who are aspiring writers and these are a mixture. Two American friends want to write literary stuff whilst a Scottish friend wants to write articles for magazines. I get feedback from all three but often with the proviso that they don’t read that sort of stuff normally. Still it is nice to be able to talk about writing with others. I must admit I am not always honest about my criticism of another’s writing I tend to judge how the criticism will be received first before I give it
How long have you been writing?
Well I was first published in a comic book format back in 1993 but I did write adventures for a role playing game called Draqonquest when I was in my teens. I have always liked writing and always wanted to write but I have only gotten serious about it in the past couple of years.
Do you find the nitty gritty of writing easy?
No I don’t, I am always coming unstuck on punctuation and grammar.I have a desktop guide for perfect punctuation and Shrink and Wright I believe it is called and a good word guide. All are used frequently but even then I still don’t know the perfect form it is a problem, when I have had some stories professionally edited they come back littered with all manner of grammar and punctuation mistakes. It’s bad.
What is your take on agents and publishers?
Agents are harder to get than a publisher but even a publisher is bloody hard to get. Many of the bigger publishing houses won’t even look at a manuscript unless it comes through an agent. I haven’t managed to get an agent yet, that is another bonus of POD, there is no need for agents. I must admit that I am a bit ambivalent about agents, I am convinced that some might even do a writer out of a deal. Then ,of course, you need a good agent and how does one find one. It’s a problem.
What feeds into your writing?
My personal likes and dislikes, of course. I like stories about the supernatural and also folklore so I tried to make my stories more true to the actual folklore. I don’t ask the question how can I make a vampire seem real, I go from the stance that all the folklore is real and work from there, that means that there can be some silly things in the stories such as a vampire stopping to pick up millet. But it is all there in the folklore. Also I have Tourette’s disorder which has coloured my view of the world so that obviously feeds into my writing, I tend to write about grimmer subjects and not comedic situations.
What has shaped you as a writer?
The obvious answer is my life before now. But really what has shaped me is my love of folklore and the supernatural especially where this book is concerned. My Tourette’s disorder has also shaped me, I have a few novels in the planning stage and I must admit all are a bit grim with plenty of dramatic conflict, but they don’t make for a happy read.
What's next?
I’m planning on writing a novel about Montague Wynnter and Sir Charles Berwick in the near future, a lot of it is already planned but I have to go into a lot more detail before I can start writing for real. The Novel is planned at about 80,000words in length so it si a bit longer than the current book.
What authors or books do you enjoy and admire?
My favourite book is ‘The Devils’ by Doestoyevsky but I must admit that I read A lot of Terry Pratchett and Robert Rankin. I’m reading a Robert Rankin book at the moment . ‘Knees up Mother Earth’. I also enjoy history books and am presently reading ‘Cicero’ by Anthony Everitt. I have, of course, read all Reverend Montague Summers books. I am also flicking through ‘Lore of the Land’ to get ideas for more stories.
Do you accept story ideas from others?
I don’t accept story ideas from others. A friend gave me an idea for a story currently in the present book but I found it very hard to write. If the idea doesn’t come from me I don’t seem able to get behind it.
Do you conduct your own research?
The research is quite simple, I have to read as much about a subject in various books as I can find. Montague Summers books come in very handy, I also have a couple of DVDs about werewolves and vampires and the folkloric tradition. Some subjects can be hard to research, but I do also mix some of what my friend, Paul, terms cod-superstition into the stories. I don’t let all the folklore restrict how I write is what I mean, but the research does play an important part, I like to get as much of the folklore into a story as I can get so it definitely must be researched.
Where do you get your book ideas and themes?
Most of the ideas come as inspiration but the inspirations come from the many folklore books I have read. Of course, I read a lot of vampire books – the last being ‘The Historian’ and that also helps with the themes and ideas. One of the stories in the ‘darkness Crawls Apace’ features Dracula but it is very subtle and only a real aficionado of the Bram Stoker book will recognize Count Dracula in my story.
How did you become a writer?
I sort of fell into it. I wrote a child’s book about pixies and liked the experience so I start to pen the Montague Wynnter tales and before I knew it I had a whole book on my hands.
Where did you find the original impulse to write this book?
The original impulse came from a ghost story I read based in Lancashire in the north of England and also from the old Universal film ‘The Wolfman’ I thought they spent too much time trying to make the creatures seem real in a modern setting. Most of what is now taken as werewolf lore bears no semblance to the folklore but just to the many Hollywood films that have come about since the forties. I wanted to get back to the folklore
Did it seem a daunting prospect at first?
All writing can seem like a daunting process. One puts everything into it and criticism can be harsh and hurt so it is always daunting to put oneself out there for a panning. Some of the stories have been said to be too abrupt although I could not see how they could be changed and writing 76,000 words can take some time. But in the case of ‘darkness Crawls Apace’ the stories built up in number slowly as I got an idea so in that sense it wasn’t very daunting, although the Wynnter novel I am working on currently is.
How long did it take to develop Montague into the character he became?
Reverend Montague Wynnter was almost born complete from the character of Montague Summers so it wasn’t a hard process. But I do believe in the character, in his reality and I think that shows through in the writing. I know how he will react and what he will get up to before I put pen to paper and I feel the reality of that comes through in the writing.
The book is being marketed as a horror book but it’s not horror in the gory sense that we have come to expect.
Well a lot of the scenes in the book are traditional horror of the Edgar Allen Poe and H P Lovecraft sense but not the current trend for disemboweling people I must admit.
I don’t think anyone has ever written about a penanggalan before where did that idea come from?
In Montague Summers’ ‘Vampire: Kith and Kin’ there is a short passage about a Malaysian vampire so you could say the idea came from there but I had to do a lot more research to find out actually what a penanggalan was capable of.
The werewolf story in particular is different from what is normally seen in movies or read in books where did you get the idea for that?
The werewolf story is lifted directly from the folklore it has none of the elements found in Hollywood movies where silver kills a werewolf and the bit is contagious and there is no cure. There are cures, anything will kill a werewolf and the bite is not contagious. Most werewolves in legend were magicians who wore a wolf belt to allow them to change. It is all very different from the Hollywood tradition. The only thing which may link the two traditions is the beast of Gevaudan said to be a werewolf which was possibly killed by a bullet made from a silver crucifix- although this idea is not supported when I actually researched the subject, but I mention it here for completeness.
Looking at the book now what surprises you?
The number of the stories and how well they stand up to the folklore, it was written in a very short time the stories just seemed to flow out and that I found very surprising.
In England, even now, there is a class system. Your own background is working class but your characters all seem middle class if not upper class why is this?
Well I wanted to create a sort of Edwardian era feel to the stories and to give the characters more leeway in their investigations it seemed more appropriate that they were in a monied class, after all most working class people must work 9 to 5 to make ends meet and don't get much opportunity to go gallivanting off around the country, also how many working people in the 20s and 30s would have had a car or be welcomed to Glamis castle – not many. I do touch on the working class in the story ‘ Ancoats ' but it is only fleeting. I also wanted to write one removed from my characters, I didn't want to write about my own experiences which may have fed into a story, I wanted a complete fiction about people I never get the opportunity to mix with.
Your stories seem, for the most part, to have an established timeline, ‘ Gaunty House' takes place in 1927 and ‘ Ancoats' in the 1930s, do you plan for all your stories to come one after the other in this timeline?
I only noticed when the stories were completed that they went in a straight timeline the last story occurring later in time than the first, to an extent this was intentional because there are at least three stories with the Zoroastrian magician involved in some way which did mean that these three stories had to be in a certain sequence, and then the rest just fell into that sequence. The story ‘Black Shuck' is not in that sequence and occurs somewhere around the late 20s, also not all the stories are in the direct timeline, ‘Night Falls on Piccadilly' and ‘Darkness Crawls Apace' are Reverend Montague Wynnter reminiscing about an earlier period in his life, but for the most part it is true to say that there is an established timeline to the stories.
You have said that your main reason behind writing Reverend Montague Wynnter and Sir Charles Berwick was to do a vampire story. However, the stories are mainly not vampire stories what made you expand your horizons and what started you off with your interest in vampires and the supernatural?
Well there are four vampire stories in the collection which I think is quite a lot, but when writing short stories one has to expand one's horizon, I couldn't really write all 17 tales about vampires it would have gotten exceedingly repetitive. However, the supernatural is a wide subject and covers an enormous amount of ideas from vampires, werewolves to spirits and ghosts. I have always had an interest in the supernatural since reading M.R.James as a lad and also since visiting Highgate cemetery in the 70s, at the time there was a flap in the press about the Highgate vampire and I went to the supposed mausoleum where it had been trapped. Of course, I had an interest in the occult as a young lad as well and read many books on magic including some by Aleister Crowley. It all feeds in to the same thing really, an interest in the unknown.
Some of the stories do see to come to an abrupt ending, what is your idea behind this?
I didn't really mean for any of the stories to come to an abrupt finish, but on the other hand I do firmly believe that I do not want to witter on nonessentials to extend a story and that a story ends where it ends. Not always satisfying, but there you have it.