INTERVIEWING, WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE

The greydogtales interview – A cutting-edge tool with which to dissect a writer’s tragic ignorance of lurchers, or ask a leading artist about his or her favourite colour of pencil. The place where editors can share their tax returns, and independent publishing houses can admit they turned down Clive Cussler’s Top Ten Hip Replacements.

our standard interview equipment
our standard interview equipment, ready for action

We started doing these things last October, with the first outline being despatched almost exactly one year ago. We were following a keenly researched five year strategic plan, and we can now reveal that the plan had three key elements:

  • To save us having to write so many original features
  • To make it look as if we vaguely knew cool people
  • To promote people we sort of liked anyway on a random basis
  • To latch on to current trends in an utterly shameless manner

Or maybe four key elements. We can’t write and do maths at the same time. Anyway, it worked. Quite a lot of people read these interviews. An astonishing number of people read some of them. And not long after we started, a slightly confused old man in Dorset clicked on a link by accident and bought someone’s book. After a couple of months, Amazon begged us to stop promoting people, as their warehouse robots were running out of oil trying to fulfil so many orders.*

In fact, such is the growing influence of greydogtales that most of our interviewees are still working in their chosen field, albeit on a reduced salary.

This October we start up again, with seventeen or eighteen overdue interviews to pack in to the next few months. We will delve again into the world of editors and magazine publishers, delight at discovering thrusting authors of weird fiction, young and old, and find artists who do neat stuff (a technical term amongst us creatives).

The reason we’re overdue is that we seriously try to read a writer’s work, investigate an artist’s portfolio or get to know a publisher before we go ahead. Which is a slow, stupid alternative to just making everything up. We don’t learn. And we often seek out people who haven’t been interviewed that much, because we like sign-posting new talent.  To make it harder. With well-known people you merely copy what they said somewhere else and change the order round. Or something like that.

*This was shortly before we were sue for constantly exaggerating our importance.

a typical mistake for young interviewers - trying to get your leg between the other guy's legs
a typical mistake for inexperienced interviewers – trying to get one leg between the other guy’s thighs to promote disclosure

But before we roll our sleeves up, we want to pay tribute to those who have gone before, those generous souls who had no particular reason to put up with our questions. Given our skills at tagging and categorisation, we can be confident that at least some of the following were real people, and that some of the links next to their names work.

Read their wise words, buy their magnificent creations, and be glad that you didn’t have to go through the process…

THE ROLL OF HONOUR

(Probably forgetting someone jolly important)

Matthew M BartlettTAG TEAM HORROR

Tom BreenTAG TEAM HORROR

Jeffrey ShanksSECRETS OF SKELOS UNVEILED

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Milton DavisBLACK IS THE NEW BLACK

Luke SpoonerHOW TO ILLUSTRATE CLIVE BARKER

Scott R JonesCTHULHU ON MARS

Rich HawkinsTHE LAST WRITER

Alan M ClarkDARK WORLDS, DARK LIVES

Joanne HallFIGHT LIKE A FANTASY AUTHOR

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Scott HandcockCOME FREELY, GO SAFELY: DRACULA

CARNACKI LIVES!

Lynne JamneckVOICES FROM THE WITCH-HOUSE

Brian J ShowersSWAN RIVER SECRETS

Darin CoelhoTHE EMPEROR OF DREAMS

John Guy Collick

John Guy CollickA COLOSSUS OF MARS

Jim McLeodA GINGER HORROR

Cobweb MehersEOLITHS AND NEPHILIM

Joshua M ReynoldsROYAL OCCULTIST WITH A WARHAMMER

carcosa XXXIV, hutter
carcosa XXXIV, hutter

Michael HutterCARCOSA AND BEYOND

Dan StarkeyDR WHO & THE DETECTIVE

Matt WillisSEA-SERPENTS & SHIP’S BISCUITS

Cameron TrostTHE BRISBANE FACTOR

scarywomen2

Laura MauroSCARY WOMEN AGAIN

V H LeslieSCARY WOMEN AGAIN

David SeniorAN ANTIQUARY IN DUNWICH

Ray CluleySURFACES FOR AIR

Neil BakerONCE IN AN APRIL MOON

corpse birds, by the great andy paciorek
corpse birds, by the great andy paciorek

Andy PaciorekWEIRDFINDER GENERAL Pt 2

INTERVIEW WITH THE WEIRDFINDER GENERAL

Paul WatsonDARK (FOLK) ARTS

Clarissa JohalSCARY WOMEN

Anita StewartSCARY WOMEN

Jorgen Bech PedersenART OF NORDIC FOLKLORE

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John CoulthartAXIOMS & OTHER BEASTS

Ted E GrauVOICE FROM THE NAMELESS DARK

Raphael OrdonezFRACTALS & FANTASIES

Sebastian CabrolSECRETS OF SOUTH AMERICA

apocrypha, thunderstorm books (2014)
apocrypha, m wayne miller, thunderstorm books (2014)

M Wayne MillerAN ARTIST SPEAKS

Richard MansfieldSHADOW OUT OF DENMARK

Sam GaffordCRITICAL VOICES

John C WrightTHE INHERITORS 3

Julia MorganTHE VOICE OF HORROR

Willie MeikleTHE INHERITORS

We may do a piece about what goes wrong at some point, and how interviews fall flat or collapse, but at the moment we’re feeling dynamic, so we won’t worry about that today, dear listener.


Now we have hundreds of odd questions to write, far too much to read, and we must do some lurcher posts soon. Probably quite a lot of dogs and William Hope Hodgson in October…

 

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