A treat for everyone today, for we are privileged to have a rare interview with author and wild child John Linwood Grant, in which he quizzes himself about his writing, and the price of soap these days, along with invaluable tips for the younger writer.

Many texts have been written about the extraordinary literary talent that is John Linwood Grant, who some critics are calling “That odd-looking man on the bench over there”. We need hardly mention the reams of analytical papers on his groundbreaking work. So we won’t. The Guardian newspaper once described him, after a harrowing photo-session, thus:

“His eyes are the colour of yesterday, his only weapon a beard which has seen wondrous things. Great hounds surge in a wave before him. If he is still sane, it is because he has stared into the abyss and then forgotten why he was doing so. Thus a gentle incompetence protects him, and always has.”

THAT INTERVIEW

John: Thank you for joining me, John. Tell us a bit about yourself, to warm things up.

John: It’s a pleasure. I was about to go to the toilet, but I might have a few minutes to spare. What is there to say which is not already included in Hamed Pasha’s seminal biography of me, ‘So I Met This Bloke with a Shopping Trolley’, last year? I suppose few readers are aware of my early career in the Parachute Regiment – I’m certainly not aware of it at all. Or my meeting in 1976 with an old Bulgarian lady who offered me a suspicious boiled sweet on a night train near Sofia. These are perhaps the moments which define us.

John: And I believe you are kept by dogs?

John: Yes, I currently belong to two lurchers, but they provide me with a reasonable degree of freedom, given my poor house-training. It’s what my mother would have wanted, although I think she would have had me neutered earlier – she never liked me spraying the furniture.

John: Indeed, indeed. Now, to your fiction. Do you prefer the short form, or the freedom allowed by novels?

John: Well, novels are better for balancing a wonky table, but stories make excellent firelighters. As for writing them, I enjoy the short story as a way of making not much money quite quickly, and the novel for making not much money over a far longer period. It is also true that in a novel, you have the room to put in all the bits that you would have left out of a good, pithy short story, thus wrecking it in the process.

John: A useful insight. What would you advise the writer who is at an early stage in their career?

John: There’s so much, isn’t there? Not expecting a career is one thing. Then… putting the words in the right order can help; semi-colons can turn a pulp tale into literary gold – as far as most editors know. Only include the sound of helicopter blades in a flashback if your character really spent military time in Vietnam – it doesn’t work so well if your protagonist is a spinster from Guildford who’s mostly interested in cantilever bridges.

And always seek diversity in your cast of characters – you can never have too many Belgians, for example. Insert a token black Belgian, and you have the big publishers eating out of your hand.

John: I hope that many will digest those points. And how about the writer and social media?

John: Yes, it’s very important nowadays to be seen on all forms of social media. I always tell other writers that they should make endless self-promotional posts without pause, ignore other people’s work, butt in on otherwise polite conversation threads with wild, inaccurate statements, and demonstrate no sense of humour. I recommend this because it makes me look slightly better by comparison. And if you do end up in contact with authors and editors who have credibility and influence, always comment on every single post they make with ‘You are SO right’, no matter what they said.*

John: You make all your own memes, I gather.

John: I have to. The High Court case on my use of other people’s memes for the purpose of money laundering and international investment fraud is on-going, sadly.

John: Where do you stand on female writers in horror and weird fiction?

John: That’s a complex issue, which involves long consideration of changing societal norms, historical patterns of gender roles, and the inalienable right of individuals to self-determination. I would summarise my view by saying that many female writers are far too good, and should be put back into the factories to work on munitions. Or conscripted. All this competition is hard work. If I have to fraternise with them, I generally try to smile and steal their notebooks.

John: Looking at the bigger picture, what would you say, as a writer,  is the underlying theme, the leitmotif of your oeuvre?

John: Not having enough money to buy a bigger picture. Oh, and not being able to clean my trousers properly has always obsessed me. That and the price of chicken carcasses. I try to explore these in most of my stories, except when I’m writing the weird and strange stuff that actually sells. Is an oeuvre some kind of foreign egg?

John: Yet when you were younger, your tales often turned on identification of that common core of humanity which makes us question our own beliefs and actions, did they not?

John: That was a phase, nothing more. I had the naive belief that characterisation was a key to drawing readers into the experiences of others. My series ‘Byzantine Pastry-making and the Role of the Sultana to 330 CE’ soon got me past that. And pale ale – that helped.

John: I also notice that you occasionally stray into pastiche. Is that an area of writing you enjoy?

John: Oh, enormously. Stealing other people’s pre-existing characters and occasionally giving them a different hat to wear, or having a Zeppelin fly past in the wrong era, is a hugely satisfying process. Most stories can be enhanced by writing ‘guv’nor’ and shoving everyone into a hansom cab now and then. Detailed research is vital, though – some copyright laws can be damned tricky, and you don’t want to be caught by the lawyers. My book ‘Buffy the Umpire Slayer’ taught me that.

John: Fascinating. Alas, we are out of time. Did you want to go to the toilet now?

John: I’m afraid that I dealt with that while we were sitting here, thanks. Might I mention my latest novel before we close.

John: No.

*If you have been affected by these issues, or really believe that this advice is useful, please seek help.

UK – Kindle now; Pb 10^th October http://amzn.eu/d/fsKVxU8

US – Kindle now; Pb 10^th October http://a.co/d/5Y3Kh4e

Two striking new books today, dear listener, from two authors far apart in many ways, yet linked by their observations of life in Japan. Pickled ginger and Kagemusha; plum blossom; a single brushstroke on mulberry paper. Oh, and Miyamoto Musashi with his Book of Five Rings. By some odd synchronicity – a word we learned from Dr Who many years ago – All Lights Will Forever After Be Dim (Orford Parish Books) by Joseph Pastula, and Hugh Ashton’s Tales of Old Japanese (J-views Publishing) turned up at roughly the same time. Both writers have lived in Japan, and both have drawn on those times to infuse their fiction. So let’s have a look at them…

TALES OF OLD JAPANESE

by Hugh Ashton

There he was again. Sitting on the Matsuokas’ garden wall by the roadside. Keiko had seen him hanging round the area for the past few weeks, but she still hadn’t told anyone about him. He looked old, maybe eighty or so, about twenty years older than Keiko, but still fit. He must have been a tall man once, she guessed, but now age had bent him and he stooped awkwardly. One arm always seemed to be hanging stiffly by his side – she’d once noticed him fishing a packet of cigarettes out of the pocket of his scruffy stained blazer, extracting a cigarette and lighting it, all one-handed.

‘Keiko’s House’

We’ll start with Hugh Ashton, who we know better as a writer of Sherlock Holmes stories. A British author, along-standing interest in Japan led him to emigrate to that country in 1988, but he has recently returned to the UK, and now lives in the cathedral city of Lichfield with his wife, Yoshiko.

His new book Tales of Old Japanese is a quite marvellous thing. It’s thoughtful, reflective and ultimately really quite moving. How you would categorise it is very difficult. It has haunting and haunted elements, without being a collection of ghost stories. You might say these are detailed, lyrical tales of people’s real lives – except for the fact that there are moments when you might easily be reading a subtle ghost tale. In short, you could read it if you love weird fiction, and you could read it if you hate weird fiction.

But let’s avoid that filing system nonsense. The book contains five short stories, each with its own central character and exploration of loss, change and age. If we told you that one story is about an old man who changes his barber, and another about an old woman who feels sad about a bird in a zoo, we would be doing the book so little justice that we would have to hit ourselves. The characters are beautifully drawn – they feel what we might feel, and their experiences speak to us. It’s probably also important to say that although these stories are about older people, their hopes and fears are those of us all – don’t expect cosy ‘elderly’ tales.

One of Ashton’s gifts is that in a few simple words we are set alongside the central characters, observers in the same room or on the same street – he avoids obfuscation and cleverness in favour of that emotional connection. We don’t want to spoil the stories through analysis here, but will note that ‘Mrs Sakamoto’s Grouse’ is an absolute delight, and that ‘Haircuts’ is a hugely sympathetic portrayal of ageing and love.

We strongly suggest reading this short book. And getting to the heart of what greydogtales is about, weird stuff, we would recommend it to those who want to write modern weird fiction. Not because that’s what Tales of Old Japanese is, as such, but because of Ashton’s style and ability to capture character – and change. And because you’ll enjoy it.

UK – http://amzn.eu/d/e5e8S06

US – http://a.co/d/8FqsZdB

As a side-note, we interviewed the author with regard to his work on Holmes here:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/holmes-lichfield-literarian/

ALL LIGHTS WILL FOREVER AFTER BE DIM

by Joseph Pastula

I first saw him standing near the Kabukicho Ichiban Gai gate. A foreign man, maybe European, I thought, due to his blonde hair and piercing green eyes. He stood there staring slightly upward into the sea of lights and signs that lined the street, saying nothing. His clothes were ragged and dirty, and with his hair and beard unkempt, he looked like a backpacker who had been walking through a much wilder expanse of nature than could be found in the heart of Shinjuku. Nobody took much notice, and I wouldn’t have either, had I not noticed the sign he was holding.

“You’ll be seeing me soon,” it read in block English letters.

‘I’ll Soon be Seeing You On’

The new book by Joseph Pastula is a different kettle of wasabi, and yet aspects of what we have said above do apply. This longer collection of short stories is unashamedly modern weird fiction, yet the bulk of it is once more set in Japan.

Pastula is an American author, artist, and translator who used to live in the Tokyo metro area. His works of weird/horror fiction include Little Oren and the Noises, a picture book for the weirder kids among us, Old Gory, a flag based work of weird fiction, and ‘Three Moves of Doom’, a fiction delving into the world of pro wrestling. He is also the creator of web based comic Silkworms.

Here, he presents a range of fascinating short stories, with even shorter interlude pieces between each of the tales, which acquaint us with the dark and bewildering sides of life in today’s Japan. Where Ashton provides a range of emotional resolutions, Pastula leaves a trail of questions behind him – ones which intrigue and worry.

In All Lights, you will find such curiosities as the hunt for a new apartment; an ill-advised visit to a fuzoku (legally almost anything but vaginal sex) establishment, and a family visit to a temple shrine. A number of these stories provide no answers as to what just happened. And we are well aware that this can be an annoying aspect of the worst of weird fiction – attempts at effect without content, without purpose. Inexperienced writers make something ‘weird’ for the sake of it, lacking the ability to affect the reader through style, structure or genuinely new visions.

In the case of Pastula, no such accusation could stand. Each of the short glimpses he gives you is more than intriguing or unnerving enough to pass muster, and like a single morsel of makizushi*, stimulating in its own right. The added bonus of some culturally unusual (for most Westerners) situations adds an extra frisson to some of the tales, but in each case you sit back and think. ‘The One That I Want’, for example, delivers a sense of strangeness slightly beyond your grasp as it intrudes into the apartment hunt – and fascinates by the way in which the characters react to their experiences (it’s quite a humorous tale in its own odd way); ‘Face to Faces’ is inexplicable and yet very poignant – and so on. Oh, and some of the stories in the collection are simply disturbing. Which is also good. You get the idea.

The collection also contains an additional three stories not related to Japan, at the end of the book – ‘A Severance of Roots’, ‘An Office Manager at Orford Mills’, and ‘Orison for the Departed’. All three are well worth the time, with ‘An Office Manager at Orford Mills’ being a particularly delightful tale with a twist of humour. ‘Orison for the Departed’ on the other hand, is plain worrying.

Again, fully recommended.

UK – http://amzn.eu/d/hleUGcL

US – http://a.co/d/5oaqiW4

*Mazikushi is either a small nori-wrapped portion of sushi, or a 15^th century Japanese mechanical device for lubricating one’s spare katana during the rainy season. How should we know?

We’ve been darned quiet recently, so today we mention a quick burst of illustrative genius, though not from us, but from that terrific Argentinian artist Sebastian Cabrol. Most of the quiet part was because old greydog has a new novel coming out very soon, and a revised collection – and one of anthologies he’s editing is also out. Which has sort of put a spike in some of the usual blethering. And we’ve been away at the coast a lot, running the longdogs. But autumn creeps in, and we are sliding back into action (we think).

(A quick catch up on the pups: Chilli, the Ghost Dog, has become addicted to Dentastix and now prefers them to her lamb bones. As for Django the Boy Wonder, he is much as always, except that we had to get rid of his favourite big red chair, as he had eaten too much of it. He’s sulking.)

Meanwhile, the author, greydog, has more bits dropping off him than usual, but has been slogging away. We’ll say more about his book ‘The Assassin’s Coin’, the larger project with artist/writer Alan M Clark of which it forms a part, and other stuff next week (audience falls unconscious). For now, we are delighted to say that the flagship anthology for Occult Detective Quarterly magazine is now available in print!

Edited by John Linwood Grant and Dave Brzeski, this is a massive 400 page anthology of new, longer supernatural fiction – novelettes and a novella – with everything from wild pulp adventure to subtle, almost Gothic hauntings. Plus grizzled PIs and serious occult detectives, an inventive rabbi in first century Palestine, an English country house mystery, street gangs of seventies New York and more:

• Her Silks and Fine Array – Amanda DeWees
• Farside – Willie Meikle
• A Shadow Against the Stars – Charles R. Rutledge
• Lazarus Come Forth – Robert Pohle
• Ed Erdelac – Conquer Comes Correct
• Mrs. Lillicrop Investigates – Bev Allen
• Ritual Killings – Sam Edwards
•  Adrian Cole – At Midnight All the Agents
• Fighters of Fear (a rare long essay on the subject from the nineties) – Mike Ashley

The book includes new commissioned b/w art, and the connection to today’s artist shout-out is that the cover is by Sebastian Cabrol…

SEBASTIAN CABROL

Fresh from an exhibition of his work in his home country, Sebastian provided us with a haunting image for the ODQP anthology, and one of the interior illustrations. Some of you may know that he also provided the memorable cover for Occult Detective Quarterly #4, and other interiors for the magazine.

Equally effective in colour and in black and white, Sebastian Cabrol’s art is possibly even more effective because he’s a genuine enthusiast of supernatural and horror literature – we’ve had a number of on-line chats with him which demonstrated this (and which also showed how crap our Spanish is compared to his command of English).

For those of you interested, we first interviewed him almost three years ago, discussing his work and his art, plus we ran a piece about working with Sebastian by another hugely creative talent from Argentina, Diego Arandojo:

http://greydogtales.com/blog/sebastian-cabrol-strange-secrets-of-south-america/

THE GATHERER

So we because we love both weird fiction and art, we had to have a quick mention on greydogtales of his latest project, which has a Kickstarter campaign running right now. ‘The Gatherer’ is an 80+ page graphic novel, drawn by Sebastian Cabrol, written by Emilia Pedrazzoli & Emiliano Pinto, and coloured and lettered by Omar Estévez. It looks fantastic.

“In the wee small hours of a cold winter’s night, a meteorite falls down on the dockland of a big city, bringing a dangerous alien parasite inside.

“Struggling to survive in an unknown and hostile environment, the sneaky visitor will take control of an eccentric tramp called Luis.

“The tramp will become the perfect vessel to give the despicable guest both power and body…”

‘The Gatherer’ has a strong film influence and an almost exclusively visual narrative resource is used to carry out the story. The intention is to pay tribute to cult genre movies both from the graphics and scripting standpoints. The book references horror and sci-fi films from the late seventies and the eighties, such as Prince of Darkness (Carpenter, 1987), The Thing (Carpenter, 1982), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Kaufman, 1978), Possession (Zulawski, 1981) The Fly (Cronenberg, 1986), Scanners (Cronenberg, 1981) and The Lords of Salem (Zombie, 2012).

There are tons of affordable rewards and extras, so go take a look now.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1267908785/the-gatherer-vol-1-for-80s-cult-horror-fans/

Meanwhile, the new anthology ‘ODQ Presents’ can be purchased at this very moment from Amazon UK and Amazon US.

US – http://a.co/d/iXrqZ3o

UK – http://amzn.eu/d/3d00qRZ

NEXT WEEK: Back in gear and updating you on all sorts, we hope…