The Lockdown with... Lex H. Jones

Lex H Jones is a British author, horror fan and rock music enthusiast who lives in Sheffield,
North England.

He has written articles for premier horror websites the ‘Gingernuts of Horror’ and the ‘Horrifically Horrifying Horror Blog’, and appeared on multiple podcasts covering various subjects such as books, films, videogames and music.

Lex’s first novel ‘Nick and Abe’, a literary fantasy about God and the Devil spending a year on earth as mortal men, was published in 2016. This was followed in 2019 by noir crime novel ‘The Other Side of the Mirror’ and illustrated children’s weird fiction book ‘The Old One and The Sea’. His latest release is a collection of ghost stories, ‘Whistling Past The Graveyard’. Lex also has a growing number of short horror stories published in collections alongside some of the greats of the genre, and in 2020 he co-created the comic strip series ‘The Anti-Climactic Adventures of Detective Vampire’ with Liam ‘Pais’ Hill. His next project is an occult detective novel titled ‘The Final Casebook of Mortimer Grimm’, which is due for release late 2021.

When not working on his own writing Lex also contributes to the proofing and editing process for other authors.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I’m from North England, Yorkshire to be specific, which means I live on the moors, it’s always foggy, and yes of course I always wear a flat cap and have a kestrel attached to my arm.

I got my first work published at the end of 2015/beginning of 2016 and since then I’ve been lucky enough to have a steady flow of work out there.

Through no effort on my part, I seem to just inherit cats that are left behind or unwanted by other people.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

I’d say it has, in the sense that I struggle to find the time and motivation to do any writing. I know the first point there, ‘finding the time’ may strike an odd chord given the fact that so much of our normal routine has been taken from us, so I’d better make that a bit clearer. My day job can be done from home as easily as in the office, and even before this all happened, I’d regularly be working at home for one or two days a week. With that in mind, Covid hasn’t given me that much time back on a working day, other than the commute.

What it has done, however, is invaded my ‘writing space’. So the office I’d usually sit at to do writing, is now the office I sit in to do my day job. After sitting there typing on one laptop for 7 hours, I’m really struggling to want to then spend my leisure time sitting there and typing at a different laptop. I also find that the lack of going places, seeing people, or doing things, has affected my motivation to much of anything creative. I think all those things spark it in me, and without them, it’s hard.

That’s not to say I haven’t done any writing at all, I have done. I’ve done a few short stories, worked on a film script, and co-created a new comic strip series. Which doesn’t sound that bad when I type it out like this! But I strongly suspect that in any other year, I’d have done more than that, and even those tasks would have flowed much easier.

3. What was the first thing you had published?

My novel ‘Nick and Abe’. This one tells the story of God and the Devil, agreeing to spend a year on earth as mortal men to see who actually understands the most (or least) about humanity. Their newfound status, however, forces them to revaluate their own relationship as father and son, and perhaps try and find some form of reconciliation. It was a strange one to write, but it got a very nice response from readers.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

Probably my children’s book, ‘The Old One and The Sea’. I’d never written a children’s book before, and I honestly didn’t know whether I could do it. Finding the tone for it was a challenge, and even at the point of paying for an editor, I wasn’t sure if I should abandon the whole project. But the reader response to that has been so warm and passionate, with people constantly telling me how they’ve read it with their children. It’s just lovely to hear that. I mean somebody reading your book is always nice, but imagine somebody choosing to read some of your work to their children. That may become one of those children’s favourite memories, and in a small way your work is now a part of it. It doesn’t get much more special than that.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

Thankfully nothing I’ve actually had published. However before I sought publication for anything, I wrote several ‘practice’ books to sort of get me in the habit of how to craft longer stories. When I’ve gone back and read some of those lately, they make my toes curl. Some of the story ideas and characters are fine, and I may actually revisit those, but the writing itself is just dreadful. It’s like looking at that wonky table you made in woodwork class aged 8. It might have four legs and a surface, but you wouldn’t dare put a drink on it.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

As I have a day job, I don’t really have full writing days. Instead I’ll block out two or three hours either on an evening, or at a weekend, and do some then. And then it’s pretty standard really. Headphones on, hands on keyboard, phone away so I don’t get distracted with anything else that’s vying for my attention.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

Can I recommend two? If you want something nice and gentle, then I’d suggest my children’s book ‘The Old One and The Sea’. It also has beautiful original artwork throughout from artist Liam Hill, so it’s worth it even for that. Or my other recommendation would be my latest release ‘Whistling Past the Graveyard’. That one is my first collection of short horror stories, and is currently getting some absolutely lovely reviews.

8. What are you working on now?

I’m currently working on a second children’s book, and also an occult detective series set in late Victorian London. The first book of this should be out at the end of this year, Covid-permitting. I can’t really say too much more about the second children’s book because I’m not entirely sure where the story is going to take me yet.

Lex’s Facebook Author Page

Lex’s Amazon Author Page

Lex on Twitter

Roth-Steyr Countdown Day Five: The Lockdown with... Gemma Files

Formerly a film critic, journalist, screenwriter and teacher, Gemma Files has been an award-winning horror author since 1999. She has published four collections of short work, three chap-books of speculative poetry, a Weird Western trilogy, a story-cycle and a stand-alone novel (Experimental Film, which won the 2016 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel and the 2016 Sunburst award for Best Adult Novel). She has two new story collections upcoming, one from Grimscribe Press (In That Endlessness Our End, February 2021) and one from Cemetery Dance (Dark Is Better).

1. Tell us three things about yourself. (If you’ve done this previously, ideally tell us three different things than last time!)

Fairly recently, I found out that the half of my family I thought was Dutch was in fact German, or—given the etymology (Hoover/Hober/Haber)—possibly Bohemian Ashkenazi Jewish, as represented by a man who emigrated to Canada and married a full Cree lady, which is how one of my cousins on that side got a tribal status card. Similarly, the journey I've gone on while parenting my son, who is on the Autism Spectrum, has led me to accept the fact that if psychiatrists had been looking for girls with ASD back when I was ten or so (the height of my bullied-and-a-bully years) then I might have gotten my own diagnosis, as opposed to almost getting treated for early-onset schizophrenia; thanks, Mom, for totally rejecting that option. Oh hey, and remember how I said last time that I sang in a choir? Turns out, choirs are perfect breeding pools for COVID-19, who I guess means those days are over. For how long, we just don't know.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

A) Oh hells yes. B) Well...

My husband works from home, and my son has been out of school since the end of February. Neither of them are going back anytime before maybe October for Steve, next February for Cal. Which means that I spend a lot of my time doing quotidian make-work, laundry, shopping, cooking. I run errands for my Mom, who's been in full lockdown since before we started self-isolating. I also look after Cal, which as of September includes essentially being his Educational Assistant for stuff like “distance learning” schoolwork, music lessons and drama classes, all conducted over Zoom. I'm not trained for this, aside from loving him and understanding how he communicates, and it really knocks me out. But Mom has finally accepted him as part of her “pod,” which means she's okay taking him for a couple of hours so I can get 500-1000 words in here and there, and that's how I'm a few scenes into a whole new story. And after almost eight months of finishing very little except notes and poetry, that's no small thing.

3. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

Still Experimental Film, I think. If that ends up being what I'm best-known for, I'll be content.

4. …and which makes you cringe?

I don't really hate anything I've written, at least not to that extent. Maybe that's because I started selling stories when I was already a “professional” writer? My parents are actors, and I grew up with freelance culture running through my veins; as long as you actually got paid something—even, say, five bucks U.S. and a copy of a magazine run off on a machine in someone's basement—then you're doing okay, by those standards.

5. What’s a normal writing day like?

Even when I don't get concentrated time to write, I'm still always writing. This is something I've come to both accept and depend on. I steal moments here and there, scribble stuff down in notebooks or on my phone (then email the files to myself), bookmark things I post on Facebook for transcription later on. Assemblage starts with making the components, right? So even just saving a new file, copy-pasting stuff into it and then moving those blurty little bits around until they start to make a kind of narrative sense are all part of the process. And when you can't concentrate enough to write you can still consume, which helps keep the juices flowing...hopefully, anyhow.;)

6. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

I have a new collection coming out in February that I'm pretty proud of (InThat Endlessness Our End, from Grimscribe Press), and I know that Jon Padgett is looking for people to review it in exchange for ARCs. Also, all the stuff I previously published through ChiZine Publications is finally available again, this time through Open Road Media. And then there's the two Trepidatio collections, Spectral Evidence and Drawn Up From Deep Places; the latter, in particular, could really use some love. Otherwise, if you've read Experimental Film then try out the Hexslinger Trilogy if you haven't already, and if you've read all of those try out We Will All Go Down Together. Plus, if you're broke, I do still “publish” fanfiction at Archive of Our Own under the handle handful_ofdust, like the fool that I am.

7. What are you working on now?

Right at this moment, I have a bunch of impending anthology requests I need to fill, so I'm working hard on that. In general, however, I'm plotting out a new novel...not the one I've been working on for the last three years, but something as physically far away from the slow apocalypse we're currently living through as humanly possible. It's called In Red Company, and it's set in 998 AD, Northumbria, England. The basic pitch is Midsommar meets The Devils. Plague-threatened nuns and visionary anchoresses and sexy relic-stealing bishops and old dead goddesses, oh my. No idea when it'll be finished, but it keeps me amused. 

Hope you enjoyed the interview with Gemma. Tomorrow is the launch date for Roth-Steyr, and I'm very excited about it. Today's your last chance to pre-order it, which you can do here.

The Lockdown with... Ashley Lister

Ashley Lister is a prolific writer of fiction across a broad range of genres, having written more

than fifty full length titles and over a hundred short stories. He is the co-host of Blackpool's Pub Poets and a regular participant (and occasional winner) in their monthly Haiku Death Match.

Aside from regularly blogging about writing, Ashley also teaches creative writing in the North West of England. He has recently completed a PhD in creative writing where he looked at the relationship between plot and genre in short fiction.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

1) I own the two cutest dogs in the world. This is Oswald and Dee. Dee is sticking out her tongue in this photo. Oswald is looking fed up with Dee’s flippant shenanigans.

2) I’ve got a PhD in creative writing. I wrote a thesis that looks at the relationship between plot and genre in short fiction.

3) I’ve written a book called Blackstone Towers, a horror novel, and I think it’s awesome.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

Perhaps we should call it ‘Writer’s Blockdown’? I will admit it hit me hard.

Lockdown gave me a lot of free time. I was able to work from home in the day job, you can still deliver lectures online, but I had free time because I wasn’t traveling to work, or going to the gym, or walking the dogs very much, or doing any socialising.

But I didn’t have the enthusiasm to do any original writing.

Then I had the idea to self-publish some of my back catalogue. I hadn’t done much in the way of self-publishing previously. I’ve usually worked with established publishing houses, but rights had reverted to me on a handful of titles so I thought I would see what the experience was like. Once I’d finished revising and uploading the previously published titles, I wondered if I should try to release a novel that I hadn’t yet placed with a publisher.

I surveyed my Facebook friends to establish the most effective title for the book and that’s how I come to be here, today, talking about Blackstone Towers.

3. What was the first thing you had published?

When I was eight, I had a poem published in a school magazine. Not only was the poem dreadful (rhyming ‘boy’ and ‘toy’) but I seem to recall it was also plagiarised. After that, when I was in my early teens, I had a letter published in the British comic Bullet, and they managed to change my surname from LISTER to LISTEN. After that my first success as an adult writer came when I wrote an erotic story for the adult magazine Forum.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

I’m torn between two choices here. Part of me wants to say my PhD thesis, which can be found at this link. It embodies research from four and a half years of my life, includes a variety of original short stories in a range of genres, as well as my supported arguments for the difference between the semantic and syntactic aspects of genre.

However, another part of me wants to talk about my poetry. During lockdown I managed to put a lot of my poetry into a single collection (Old People Sex and other highly offensive poems), and I like that book because I know it makes readers laugh. My late father was a stand-up comedian and it’s always been an ambition of mine to entertain an audience in a similar way to him, so I think this book would have made him proud.

This is the opening stanza from the title poem of that collection:

Granny pulled on her surgical stockings
She put her false teeth in the glass
She took the Tena pad out of her panties
And said, “Grandpa, could you please f**k my ass?”

5. …and which makes you cringe?

There is a trilogy of erotic stories that I wrote a few years ago.

If I found a genie in a bottle, and I was granted three wishes, rather than doing something nice like removing illness and disease from the world or establishing a fairer balance of economic distribution, I’d ask the genie to remove each of those books.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

When writer’s blockdown isn’t happening, I have a fairly rigid schedule. I get up at five and go to the gym for an hour. When I get back I breakfast, shower, shave and dress. A couple of days a week I go onto the campus and deliver lectures on creative writing and other English-related subjects. This completes my nine-to-five.

On the days when I’m not lecturing, I’ll spend a couple of hours writing from nine to eleven, walk the dogs, and then spend the afternoon either working on edits, researching, blogging or immersing myself in other tangentially related writing projects.

I’m very lucky in that I can spend so much of my time immersed in writing and stories.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a

good book?

My horror novel Blackstone Towers is due out on August 22^nd. I’m very pleased with this one because it contains ghosts, zombies, daemons and lots of background supernatural elements. I think it was Toni Morrison who said, “If there's a book that you want to read, but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it.” Blackstone Towers is the book I wanted to read that I had to write.

This is the blurb from the back of the book.

The talismans of the magi control seven realms of the mortal world. One can grant the bearer immortality; another gives its owner unfathomable wealth; a third gives the holder unerring foresight. There is a talisman to control reality, success, the deliberate and the accidental, and a talisman that governs the balance between love and hate.

The planets are now aligning, and one worldly resident of Blackstone Towers knows the talismans urgently need collecting and destroying before they fall into the wrong hands.

The only problem is establishing whose hands are the wrong ones.

8. What are you working on now?

I’m about to embark on a blog tour to promote Blackstone Towers, with dates and locations below. [Ed: the blog tour's now complete, but why not check it out anyway? :) ]

My next project is going to be a series of horror novels, each one set around the same fictional university. There’ll be a Lovecraftian theme to all of the stories because I’ve recently been binging my way through the Herbert West – Reanimator stories and they have a definite allure that I think is always overshadowed by the Cthulhu mythos.

On top of that, I’m planning to spend a little downtime reading The Feast of All Souls because it looks like it’s going to be a delightful read. [Ed: Aw, shucks - thank you!]

Thank you for inviting me to visit your blog today. It’s been a genuine pleasure.

The Lockdown with... Catherine Cavendish

Following a varied career in sales, advertising and career guidance, Catherine Cavendish is now the full-time author of a number of paranormal, ghostly and Gothic horror novels, novellas and short stories. Cat’s novels include The Garden of Bewitchment. The Haunting of Henderson Close, the Nemesis of the Gods trilogy - Wrath of the Ancients, Waking the Ancients and Damned by the Ancients, plus The Devil’s Serenade, The Pendle Curse and Saving Grace Devine.

Her novellas include The Malan Witch (to be published in Summer 2020), The Darkest Veil, Linden Manor, Cold Revenge, Miss Abigail’s Room, The Demons of Cambian Street, Dark Avenging Angel, The Devil Inside Her, and The Second Wife.

Her short stories have appeared in a number of anthologies including Silver Shamrock’s Midnight in the Graveyard and her story The Oubliette of Élie Loyd will appear in their forthcoming Midnight in the Pentagram, to be published later this year.

She lives by the sea in Southport, England with her long-suffering husband, and a black cat called Serafina who has never forgotten that her species used to be worshipped in ancient Egypt. She sees no reason why that practice should not continue.

You can connect with Cat here:

Catherine Cavendish

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Goodreads

1. 
   Tell us three things about yourself

I was born in Hereford and for the first two years of my life we lived in the same village as serial killer Fred West. Fortunately, our paths never crossed.

I used to work in advertising – for a number of newspapers, including The Yorkshire Post

The last time I saw my natural hair colour was in 1972!

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

When the lockdown began, I was working on my new novel and was in the process of redrafting it. I carried on. I think the continuity of it helped. I have been one of the lucky ones because I have heard and read of people who have been badly affected and haven’t been able to create anything much since this all started. One thing I have been determined to do though – I am not writing a novel about lockdown!

3. What was the first thing you published?
   
   
   

A short ghost story set on the Yorkshire moors near where I grew up. It was called In My Lady’s Chamber.

4. Which piece of writing are your proudest of?

Always a tough question to answer because it’s usually whatever I’m currently working on or whatever has been most recently published but, taking a step back, I would say one of my personal favourites is The Pendle Curse, which is a novel centred around the infamous Lancashire Witch trials of 1612. It has witches, a time slip, ghosts, haunted buildings, demonic possession and evil children – all my favourites.

5. 
   …and which make you cringe?

Fortunately, nothing that is currently in print. However, I do cringe whenever I read the outpourings of teenage angst I wrote many years ago and had the nerve to call poetry

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

It starts with the ‘business of writing’ as I call it – responding to emails, writing emails, blogs, social media and so on, and then, in the afternoon, I settle down to work on whatever is in progress at the time. This may involve more reading and note-taking than actual writing if I am at the embryonic, research stage. A lot of my stories have a historical setting and I need to get the details right and the atmosphere as authentic as possible. If I am working on a first draft, I like to try and get around 2000 words down per day but sometimes it’s more, sometimes a little less. Sometimes of course, yesterday’s 2000 may hit the dust the following day, when I read over it and find I have made about as much sense as a politician on lockdown.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown?

Now that depends on their particular preference. The Pendle Curse I have already mentioned for fans of all things witchy, The Haunting of Henderson Close if you like scary, haunted places, Edinburgh and dark shadows. Then there’s The Garden of Bewitchment – the wild and rugged moors of the West Riding of Yorkshire, two sisters with a passion for the Brontës, ghosts and a really scary toy that no one in their right minds should play with.

8. What are you working on now?

A novel set mainly in 1941 in the middle of the London Blitz. This one features the occult, Churchill, and a young woman who has become an unwitting target…

The Lockdown with... Sean Hogan

Sean is a writer and filmmaker living in Margate. He has published three books to date: England's Screaming, Three Mothers, One Father and a critical monograph on the film Death Line. His feature film credits include The Devil's Business, Future Shock! The Story of 2000AD and The Borderlands, as well as a long trail of cinematic corpses that he'd rather not talk about.

1. Tell us three things about yourself.
   

I once annoyed Sylvester Stallone so badly at a London Film Festival Q&A (simply by asking a non kiss-ass question) that they terminated the session immediately afterwards.

I own a psychotic cat named Tuco, who I have long suspected isn't actually a feline at all, but a demon familiar from the lower depths of Hell.

Kim Newman and I devised two horror anthology plays, The Hallowe'en Sessions and The Ghost Train Doesn't Stop Here Anymore (written by ourselves and a host of other extremely talented genre writers) and staged them both in London. People often ask if we'll ever do another. The answer to that is, I directed both shows and it nearly killed me. Twice. I'm not particularly eager to try for third time lucky.

2. 
   Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

I haven't found that it's affected me too badly, possibly because, as someone who's decidedly agnostic about social media anyway, I usually manage to resist the urge to doomscroll too much. So my day-to-day writing routine is pretty much what it always was – bursts of activity punctuated by general indolence.

3. What was the first thing you had published?

That would be my book on Gary Sherman's excellent film Death Line, back in 2017. I'd done various bits of non-fiction writing (interviews, essays, reviews) over the years, but when I was actually commissioned to contribute to what was ostensibly meant to be a series of critical monographs, the book somehow ended up being mostly fictional. I had such a good time doing it that it A) served as a gateway into me doing more prose fiction, and B) ended up spawning the next two books I had published.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?
   
   
   

I suppose it would have to be England's Screaming, simply because it was an idea I'd long fantasised about, without ever really believing I would or could actually write it. And when I did finally decide to make the attempt, I still had no idea as to exactly how I was going to go about it, or whether I was capable of writing something of novel length. So the fact that I even completed it felt like a massive accomplishment at the time. Now that the book's been published and people seem to be responding to it, there is definitely a certain sense of pride that I managed to pull it off.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

The horror stories you hear about screenwriting are all entirely true. So you can pretty much go to my IMDB page and pick out any film not called The Borderlands (where, incredibly, they just shot what I wrote without changing anything, and it worked!) where I was employed solely as a screenwriter, and I guarantee you that not only do they make me cringe, but reliving the memories of working on them is enough to send my blood pressure surging through the roof.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?
   
   
   

It really depends what I'm working on. Scriptwriting is almost second-nature to me now, so I find that decidedly less onerous and can get much more done without wanting to burst into tears or make a dash for the wine rack. But if I'm working on prose fiction (which I've been doing a lot more of recently), I'm still training my writing brain to think that way, which makes the work a lot slower/more frustrating. Add to that a healthy case of Imposter Syndrome (“I'm just a screenwriter, what moral or ethical right do I have to write ACTUAL PROSE?”), and I'm grateful if I can slog through 1000-1500 words in a day. And possibly this is entirely down to my own laziness, but I also seem to be an either/or writer. That is, I only seem to be able to work on one thing on any given day – I generally don't, say, find myself bouncing between prose pages in the morning and scripting in the afternoon.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

If I actually liked kids, I might compare this to having to choose between my own children. Well...I'll say England's Screaming again, because it's the meatiest of the books and seems to generally be having the desired effect for readers; that is, it's not solely aimed at those people who'll get every last obscure film reference, but should also work both as a primer on some interesting movies you might not have seen, and as a plain and simple story. But while I'm at it, I'll be completely shameless and say that if you liked that one, then you might want to consider picking up my other 2020 book, Three Mothers, One Father, which is a Eurohorror semi-sequel to England's Screaming, and possibly even the monograph on Death Line, the narrative portion of which functions as a sort of prequel to it. (I hear shared universes are very hot right now.)

8. What are you working on now?

Two writing projects, currently: a game script for a first-person shooter, and a novel proper, The Corpse Road. And there are one or two film projects bubbling under, assuming we're not all just scrabbling around in the ruins of civilisation come the end of the year...

The Lockdown with... Daisy Lyle

Daisy Lyle is a British dark fantasy blogger and writer based in Normandy, though she spends a great deal of time in Devon. She is a technical translator and former aerospace engineer. For the past sixteen years she has written a fiction blog called Darkling Tales (here and more recently here) where she reviews both recent supernatural fiction and lesser-known weird tale authors of the past. She also contributes book reviews to the UK-based Ginger Nuts of Horror website. Her debut novel is The Viridian Mode. 

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

Thing 1: I have a lifelong fascination with pop videos, both rubbish and otherwise, and wish I could make them as a job. Although my favourite era of pop video is the first half of the eighties, recent favourites include “Mantra” by Bring Me The Horizon and ‘Many Moons’ by Janelle Monae.

Thing 2: I won the Inquisitor crossword twice but the first time they failed to send me my prize (the famed bottled of champagne), and the second time it arrived, but turned out to be cava. I look down on cava even more than I look down on people who do sudoku, and if I’d been at home when the bottle arrived I’d have smashed it in the yard. Instead my mother and her boyfriend drank it, the plebs.

Thing 3: I am intermittently a Friend of Arthur Machen (when I remember to pay the subscription) and I once had a beautiful dream that I met him in the Sheffield city centre branch of Boots and he said he was a Friend of Me too.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

My output as a writer hasn’t been affected by the coronavirus at all. I live in rural isolation and have to deal with boredom a lot due to a series of poor life choices, so the lockdown barely affected my mood or productivity. Also, those dark mutterings about the collapse of the publishing industry will provide me with a perfect excuse for literary failure, should I require one.

3. What was the first review you ever wrote?

Before Darkling Tales I used to have another Livejournal “community” with an even more poncey name, Souls Adrift. On the historic day of August 12th 2004 I wrote a one-paragraph review of ‘Amour Dure’ by Vernon Lee. I was very enthusiastic about that story and still am, I’m a massive Lee fan. Quite a lot of people posted in Souls Adrift but I terminated its community status one day in a fit of pique, probably because people weren’t paying enough attention to me. That just meant I had to think up a whole new name when I inevitably made another community, and that’s how the new one ended up with the terrible name of Darkling Tales.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

When I was seven me and my twin sister compiled a survey about sex which included the question “Would you get a sex change?” This was quite edgy for the year [REDACTED]. Both our parents answered in the negative, though I am pleased to report that my twin sister is now my twin brother so the whole thing wasn’t a complete waste of time.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

Everything else I’ve ever written or tried to write. Also, I keep making factually inaccurate statements in my Darkling Tales posts, and once had to be politely corrected by Ellen Datlow for alleging that one of her anthologies didn’t have any non-UK/US writers in it. Along with Richard Dalby and Stephen Jones, Datlow is my favourite horror anthologist of all time, so this aroused an odd combination of emotions in me, namely giddy delight at my existence having been noticed by such a being, mixed with a scalding shame that has still barely faded to this day. Since then I’ve tried to be more careful with fact-checking but I still do stuff things up quite regularly.

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

It starts late – I’m very nocturnal and never write until the last four hours of my day (except for the month when I was doing the revision work on The Viridian Mode), though I get a lot of my ideas in the early evening walking about the countryside. After dinner I go up to my bedroom to grapple with said ideas until they turn into fiction. I try to write every night although as I work from home the day job does get in the way sometimes.

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

I would imagine The Viridian Mode is quite suitable for people undergoing the rigors of lockdown as it’s pretty escapist. Although it’s mainly set in the real world there are several incursions into another dimension, and while the fantasy is definitely of the dark variety it also offers romance and (one hopes) a few laughs. If people miss the great outdoors or being able to go on holiday to the countryside they might also enjoy its setting, which is on a decaying country estate in Devon, described at some length. In all my writing I am constantly trying to emulate authors like John Buchan, E.F. Benson and L.T.C. Rolt, who were fantastic nature writers as well as excellent ghost story authors. The Edwardian era and the 1920s were particularly good for writers of that kind although there are still some great ones today, such as Mark Valentine and Quentin S. Crisp.

8. What are you working on now?

I’m working on my second novel The Shrine of Zero. It’s my first attempt at largely urban fantasy and combines a lot of my hobby-horses: vinyl records, goth bands, British “new towns”, moths and, of course, bonkers Victorian religious cults and street traders. It’s going to be bigger and more complicated than my first novel but I’m having fun inventing a tailor-made magical system for one of my characters.

The Lockdown with... Tom Johnstone

Born in 1968, Tom Johnstone came to writing rather late in life, and so pursues it with the quiet desperation of someone conscious of the relatively short time he has left. His novella The Monsters are Due in Madison Square Garden, published by Omnium Gatherum Books, is mainly set at the time of the 1939 Nazi rallies in the place mentioned in the title, but has a certain resonance in this age of right-wing demagogues in power in Britain, America and elsewhere. His collection of interlaced stories, LastStop Wellsbourne, has a fair amount of socio-political commentary baked into it too, so much so that David Longhorn of Supernatural Tales called it a ‘state of the nation’ novel in short story form, and says of the author that he “has quietly risen through the ranks to become a first-rate craftsman of the short story.” His stories have also appeared in such publications as A Ghosts and Scholars Book of Folk Horror (Sarob Press), Single Slices (Cutting Block Press) and Best Horror of the Year #8 (Night Shade Books), with further anthology appearances scheduled in Nightscript Vol. 6 (Chthonic Matter Press) and Body Shocks (Tachyon Publications). Also forthcoming from Omnium Gatherum Books is the sequel to The Monsters…, entitled Star Spangled Knuckle Duster. 

1. Tell us three things about yourself.

I can operate a Hayter ride-on lawn-mower (sort of).

I was once a stagehand on a production of ‘The Scottish Play’, which took place on the island of Inch Colm in the Forth, and starred John Bett, formerly of 7.84 Theatre Company, with the audience ferried out there for each performance.

I spent a good part of the mid-nineties up trees and sitting in front of bulldozers on various road protests. Not really the up-a-tree part so much as my climbing ability and head for heights leaves a fair amount to be desired.

2. Many writers have said the COVID-19 outbreak and the lockdown have made it harder for them to create. Have you found this? Has the outbreak affected you as a writer and if so, how?

In some ways, it hasn’t affected me at all, as my ‘day job’ has remained unaffected, so I’m not benefiting (or suffering) from any extra time at home. If anything I’ve been busier at work, so more tired. Last summer, I took to writing in a pub on the way home from work, scribbling rough drafts down in a semi-inebriated haze (well, in a notebook actually!), which proved surprisingly productive. One of the stories I wrote in this fashion (finishing a tale I began in a creative writing workshop co-hosted by the fabulous and delightful Victoria Leslie) will be appearing in Volume 6 of Nightscript! But it’s a writing setting that is obviously out of reach to me at present.

The virus has negatively affected my writing in practical ways, which have had a knock-on effect on my creativity. A novella that was supposed to be part of a series, due for publication in the spring has now been delayed until the Autumn, because of the impact of the virus on sales. This has somewhat taken the wind out of my sales with regard to working on the next one in the series.

On the other hand, the crisis and its political ramifications have inspired me to produce fiction about it. When the outbreak first reached this country, I swore blind I wouldn’t write a ‘virus story’, thinking the market would be flooded both with virally-themed anthologies and enough stories on this subject to fill them several times over. I’ve since relented and written something called ‘Untogetherness’, which thanks to my observations of what it’s actually like to live through this situation as opposed to typical fictional representations of what it might be like, I sincerely hope is not too corny. But it’s yet to find a publisher, as the deluge of Covid-themed open calls ready to snap it up doesn’t seem to have materialised…

3. What was the first thing you had published?

A short story called ‘Trail of Tears’, credited to ‘T.R. Johnstone’, in Dark Tales magazine, Vol. 12. The first one credited to ‘Tom Johnstone’ was ‘Dairy of a Madman’, in Dark Tales 13, which also featured a story by a writer many readers of your blog will have heard of, a certain Priya Sharma.

4. Which piece of writing are you proudest of?

‘The Beast in the Palace’, my Georgian gothic novelette set in and around the Brighton Pavilion in 1829, as it’s one of my boldest stylistically, structurally and thematically. It was the first, and to date only, story I sold to Black Static, so it has a special place in my heart.

5. …and which makes you cringe?

All of them, including even the aforementioned story in places. And let’s not even start on the adolescent poetry. There’s no escape from the Cringe Factor in anything I write, I find, and there’s nothing like getting something published and irrevocably in the public arena to make you spot every shortcoming, glitch, typo and other unforced error in your work. Re-reading your own work is almost as risky as reading your Amazon reviews, or indeed any reviews. On the other hand, I sometimes take a fresh look at a story that’s been rejected so many times I’ve decided to retire it (unceremoniously, without even a carriage clock) and think, You know what? This isn’t too bad. It isn’t too bad at all… That’s how I came up with my first collection. Most writers do the sensible thing and pack their debut collection with reprints of their most prestigious story sales. I filled mine with unwanted stories. So more of an album of interesting B-sides and out-takes than a greatest hits compilation. I’m really selling it here, aren’t I…?

6. What’s a normal writing day like?

On working days, I aim to start writing from 5.30am until 6.30am in time to leave for work. In practice, I piss around checking my emails, the submissions grinder, social media, news sites (for research purposes of course) and then write for about ten minutes, or at best half an hour, but somehow between these and longer sessions at the weekend, when put together and edited they end up amounting to something I can persuade myself is worthy of publication.

I used to pull all-nighters, but I can’t do that these days. I find self-doubt and negativity is stronger in the hours of darkness, which makes them better for editing. Unless I’m drunk, in which case I can scribble stuff down in the pub (or could in pre-Covid times...)

7. What work of yours would you recommend for people on lockdown and in need of a good book?

The collection I mentioned earlier’s a good one: Last Stop Wellsbourne, published by Omnium Gatherum Books. I may have called it an album of B-sides, but to stretch the musical metaphor, it’s also something of a concept album. The title refers to my adopted home town of Brighton’s ‘lost’ underground river the Wellsbourne, and also the lost town of the same name I’ve invented, in the tradition of weird, haunted places in horror literature from Lovecraft’s Miskatonic Valley to Joel Lane’s Clayheath. And while it does include a fair amount of unpublished stories, there are also some reprints I certainly wouldn’t write off as B-sides, such as ‘The Beast in the Palace’, which fits in well with the theme: George IV, who was responsible for draining the Wellsbourne ‘irl’ as the cool kids say, appears in the story as a character in a way readers will, I hope, find hard to forget…

For those who enjoyed the Spine Chillers readings that were like Jackanory for classic horror fans in the Eighties, I’ve started making videos of fireside readings of some of my stories. Here are some links to the ones I’ve done so far: What I Found In The Shed, Mum And Dad And The Girl From The Flats Over The Road and The Man In The Black Suit, Part One and Part Two.  

8. What are you working on now?

My main focus at the moment is the third novella in a sequence about reluctant occult detective Herb Fry and his associate Daniel Spiegel. The first, narrated by Fry, is called The Monsters are Due in Madison Square Garden, which Omnium Gatherum Books published two years ago. The second, Star Spangled Knuckle Duster, told by Spiegel, is due out shortly. I’m currently in the process of writing The Song of Salome, which returns to the Universal Monster Movie theme of the first.

Actually, at getting on for 30,000 words each, and with their historical scope and scale, taking in events from the 1919 Red Summer to the 1950s Red Scare, and including historical characters such as Meyer Lansky and Bela Lugosi, the first two feel more like short novels. I’m hoping the third one will have more of the concentration and intimacy of a novella.