“I like knowing what we were as human beings, what we’ve been. It gives me some indication of where we’re going and why.” Weird art, horrors from history, the relevance of Jack the Ripper and much more today in our exclusive interview with Alan M Clark. Alan is an artist of long standing who has garnered many awards and nominations for his illustrations. In recent years he has also gained a strong following for his disturbing fiction.
A resident of Oregon, he has illustrated books and stories by authors as diverse as Jack Ketchum, Poppy Z Brite, Stephen King, Joe R Lansdale and Ray Bradbury. His most recent fiction release was The Surgeon’s Mate: A Dismemoir, an unsettling work which combines genuine autobiography with Victorian horror. Let’s hear all about him…
Please note that as with a number of our guests, Alan is a professional artist, and his work is copyright. For those who are interested, a .pdf is given at the end of the article, citing where the art first appeared, etc.
greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Alan. As you’re both an artist and a writer, we ought to try and do justice to both sides of your creative output. Let’s start, as you did, with the art and amble along to the writing later, if that’s OK?
alan: Thanks. Yes, I am a story-teller on both fronts, and they require similar techniques to engage an audience.
On Art
greydog: You have more than thirty years professional experience, both in producing original works of art and in illustrating other people’s fiction. Did you intend to make this your main career when you started out?
alan: As a teen in the 1970s, looking into the future of college and work, I had little hope of doing what I wanted for a living. What I wanted to pursue was creative endeavor—visual art, writing, film, acting—at some level, yet I didn’t expect to succeed in making a career of it. Luckily, I had parents who payed for my college education. I was best at visual art and disdained the commercial, so I chose a fine arts college, the San Francisco Art Institute, and got a BFA in painting, with a minor in sculpture. Without hope of making fine arts career, I saw the experience of college as good practice for what interested me, but felt as though it was merely four more years I wouldn’t have to work in a plant, a factory, in retail, or food service.
After college, I had a few forgettable jobs, got married, and continued to produce artwork in my spare time. I tried to get my paintings, drawings and sculptures into galleries, and quickly realized I didn’t like the fine arts scene. Being an avid reader of fiction, loving many of the cover paintings on the books I read, being a writer and story-teller at heart, and, finally, meeting people involved in the publishing industry, I decided to give illustration a try. Turned out I was pretty good at the business end. With persistence, I got work.
greydog: You’ve won many awards for your artwork, including the World Fantasy Award (1994), and have done an enormous number of book covers. Did you find the cover work satisfying, or was it basically about earning a wage?
alan: I’ve truly enjoyed my career in illustration. Before I became an illustrator, I could not have dreamed of all that I’ve accomplished, much of it in collaboration with others in the industry, the writing I’ve had the good fortune to enhance visually, the editors and writers I’ve met and befriended, the weird and wonderful that I discovered within my own imagination, the trust given me as I took artistic risks that I could only hope would pay off.
greydog: There are some fantastic pieces of original art in your portfolio, ranging from quiet and suggestive to out-and-out bizarre. Do you have an artistic comfort zone, or is it all about exploring?
alan: When I get a job, I always establish in my mind some idea I’m comfortable with, something to fall back on for the job, something I know I can do well and that would please the publisher. Yet I am not satisfied unless I am growing, trying new things. I push myself to reach for the new and different, things that will test and stretch my skills.
Exploration is key. I want plenty of discovery in my visual art, as well as in my writing. I have various techniques that promote that, and I maintain a work situation that has distraction built into it. That helps me avoid the echo chamber in my head that comes from concentrating too intently on the work at hand. I try to take avenues into the work that allow for the element of chance. That’s a bit hard to pin down with words, but I suppose a good way to describe the state of mind I want to achieve while working is one of free association.
greydog: We regularly feature artists on the site – some are long-timers, others developing their careers. How has the art scene changed since you got involved? Do you think it’s easier or harder now to make your mark?
alan: If you’re talking about book and magazine illustration, there are a lot more opportunities than when I started out, but publishers want to pay little to artists to produce artwork. With less pay involved, it’s difficult to devote all ones energies to a career in illustration, and nearly all those I know in the business have other jobs as well. I’d say it’s more difficult to make your mark today.
On Writing
greydog: OK, we should move on. What would you say triggered the move to write your own books?
alan: I’ve written ever since I was a teenager, especially short fiction. For the longest time, though, just as with the artwork, I didn’t assume there would be enough interest in what I did to make a go of it. My first four published novels were collaborations with other writers, Siren Promised, with Jeremy Robert Johnson, The Blood of Father Time duology with Stephen C. Merritt and Lorelei Shannon, and D.D. Murphry, Secret Policeman with Elizabeth Massie.
Cameron Pierce, editor for the Eraserhead Press imprint, Lazy Fascist Press, asked me for a novel, and that broke my assumption. The novel I wrote for him, Of Thimble and Threat, was the first volume in what became my Jack the Ripper Victims series, and truly inspired me to devote my writing energies to what I call Historical Terror: Horror that Happened, basically a line of dark historical fiction.
greydog: Your recent novel The Surgeon’s Mate: A Dismemoir is an unusual book. We’ve just completed it, and found it fascinating. You present both a harrowing personal memoir and a portrait of a deeply disturbed fictional character. People often say that writing about one’s own difficulties is cathartic. Did you find that the case here?
alan: Thank you. Yes, I did, but then the difficulties I wrote about, surviving brain abscesses and alcohol and drug addiction are ones I dealt with over twenty years ago, so I’ve had plenty of time to get stuff off my chest with family and friends. The novel was in some ways an effort to pull back from my life and get a bit of perspective. Along with viewing it from a different angle, as well as contrasting my life with that of a character who embodied chilling cruelty and horror, came gratitude for what I have had, for what I have. Strangely, the experience of writing it also gave me hope for the future.
greydog: Was the idea of the surgeon’s mate character, Frederick, born during your periods of disorientation and hallucination, or did he come along later to be used as a counterfoil to your own experiences?
alan: As awful as it may seem, the character of Frederick truly was born in hallucinations I had during seizures, a result of brain abscesses in the right temporal lobe of my brain. The hallucinations that come with seizures of that type, because of their location in the brain, are highly emotional. Mine were full of an intense dread and came with visuals, smells, and sounds that though vivid, were too bizarre to describe, like a dream too weird to remember after awakening. Of course, I would not name the figure that came to me in the visions until twenty-six years later, when I wrote The Surgeon’s Mate: A Dismemoir.
Most of what I knew of Frederick at the time of my illness and hospital stay was only feeling, impressions of an individual who wasn’t or at least shouldn’t have been real. He did feel real, even though I quickly came to assume he was purely hallucinatory. The dread that went with the hallucinations gave him an aspect of being broken, abused, and of being malevolent. He wanted to abuse. The “feeling” I had of him stuck with me, and I gave his personality to a 19th century serial killer I wanted to write about, a contemporary of Jack the Ripper. That said, somehow he and the hallucinations had suggested to my imagination that they emerged from that time period, the late Victorian era. The idea for the character in the novel emerged from the complex feelings associated with the seizure hallucinations. These are complex things to talk about in a short interview. Suffice it to say that the human brain is just plain weird and wonderful, a conjuror capable of the wildest flights.
greydog: A Dismemoir also raises the subject of Jack the Ripper, something relevant to your on-going series of books on victims of the man. This series is another unusual take – what inspired it?
alan: Reading the police reports about the murders and finding a list of the possession Catherine Eddowes had on her person at the crime scene. That list humanized her for me for the first time. She’d stayed the two nights prior to that of her death in the casual ward of the workhouse. That was an outdoor segment of the facility for those who needed a place to sleep but either didn’t want to enter the workhouse proper or were unwelcome, such as those who arrived clearly ill or criminals known to the workhouse staff.
Catherine Eddowes had over fifty items with her. She wore several layers of clothing and had numerous pocket-like bags, no doubt worn hidden beneath her top skirt, which held her possessions, most likely everything she owned. The list was pitiful and spoke of one who survived day to day with very little. Clearly, she valued even the incomplete sets among her items, such as the single red mitten, and broken items, such as the partial pair of spectacles. I envisioned a novel that demonstrated the incidental acquisition of the possessions over the course of her lifetime in the midst of telling the story. That became the first novel in the Jack the Ripper Victims Series, Of Thimble and Threat. Here’s the list, omitting only her numerous garments:
- 2 small blue bags made of bed ticking
- 2 short black clay pipes
- 1 tin box containing tea
- 1 tin box containing sugar
- 1 tin matchbox, empty
- 12 pieces white rag, some slightly bloodstained
- 1 piece coarse linen, white
- 1 piece of blue and white shirting, 3 cornered
- 1 piece red flannel with pins and needles
- 6 pieces soap
- 1 small tooth comb
- 1 white handle table knife
- 1 metal teaspoon
- 1 red leather cigarette case with white metal fittings
- 1 ball hemp
- 1 piece of old white apron with repair
- Several buttons and a thimble
- Mustard tin containing two pawn tickets, One in the name of Emily Birrell, 52 White’s Row, dated August 31, 9d for a man’s flannel shirt. The other is in the name of Jane Kelly of 6 Dorset Street and dated September 28, 2S for a pair of men’s boots. Both addresses are false.
- Printed handbill and according to a press report- a printed card for ‘Frank Carter,305,Bethnal Green Road
- Portion of a pair of spectacles
- 1 red mitten
The second novel, Say Anything But Your Prayers, about the life of Elizabeth Stride, was inspired by the woman’s lies and various mysteries surrounding her life, death, and even the inquest into her murder.
greydog: Given that you’re obviously well-versed in the subject, is Jack the Ripper himself actually important? Despite all the grandiose theories, he may just have been an inadequate man with mental health issues. Does he really deserve such lasting notoriety?
alan: Good question. Yes, the identity of Jack the Ripper has become such a muddle, with so many extravagant, tabloid-like speculations that I’ve lost some interest in the killer. For me, the Whitechapel Murderer is more a symptom of the social, economic, and environmental ills of Victorian London. Lately, I find the tales of the survival of common folks within that gritty environment more compelling.
On History
greydog: Much of your writing seems to be split between historical Americana and Victoriana – we get the feeling that you’re a serious history buff.
alan: I suppose I am. I like knowing what we were as human beings, what we’ve been. It gives me some indication of where we’re going and why. More than that, I am interested in the situations in which human beings find themselves at odds with their environment, the decisions they made, and how they managed to persevere. That’s at the heart of all of the great tales that have been told.
In modern western society, we manage quite easily compared to our forebears. We have a lot of advantages in technology and infrastructure. Take all that away and you have an exotic environment. That’s what has become so compelling to folks in zombie fiction and other post apocalyptic tales of late, with society in shambles and folks scrambling to secure their world with almost no technological infrastructure.
Instead of a totally made-up one, such as you might find in a science fiction or fantasy tale, I use the past as an exotic environment and demonstrate the human grit and determination required to survive, if not thrive. Emotional struggle, conflict, characters facing adversity and succumbing or prevailing based on their flaws, strengths, or, strangely, both, that’s what stories are all about. Human beings have lived like that; lived with that, and through that cycle of emotions for thousands of years. We are not so different from our forebears that we cannot understand them. All our emotions are the same and we’re good at interpreting the choices and motivations of others within the contexts of their lives. What stimulated the emotions of someone who lived one hundred and fifty years ago might have been a bit different here and there, but we just need to know the context—environmental, personal, and historical—in order to understand.
greydog: True. We were amused when we came across the poetry of Sextus Propertius (d.15 BCE) years ago. Many of his verses are entirely understandable today – a turbulent affair with a woman called Cynthia, complaints about the streets not being safe and the like. Over 2000 years ago, people were still people.
On a slightly different note, your company IFD (Imagination Fully Dilated) Publishing is described as ‘dedicated to presenting works of fiction that reflect the glorious and terrifying nature of life itself.’ Are the books you publish very much those which match your own personal approach, or do you look for contrast when working with other writers?
alan: My partners in IFD Publishing are Elizabeth Engstrom and Eric Witchey. All three of us write character-driven narratives in which the motivations of the characters are paramount. Elizabeth Engstrom wrote the historical fiction novel, Lizzy Borden, which was one of my inspirations in conceiving the idea of Historical Terror: Horror that Happened. We three joined forces as a sort of consortium, each of us bringing various and different talents to the publishing effort, my contribution most often illustration. We did it initially to put out our back lists, those novels previously released by other publishers, but out of print. With time, we’ve taken on a few other authors and done some of our own first publication releases.
greydog: We must let you escape. You have another Victims of the Ripper book coming this Summer – anything you can tell us about that one?
alan: Yes, the third novel in the Jack the Ripper Victims Series, A Brutal Chill in August, is about the life of Mary Ann “Polly” Nichols. The story explores how alcoholism can gradually and seductively take one down the rabbit hole. Being an alcoholic in the twentieth century, I’ve survived what killed nearly all those afflicted with the disease before AA and substance abuse treatment came along. I had a lot of help, and have been sober for 26 years. In Whitechapel, London during the Victorian era, a time in which middle-aged, single women were seen to have little worth, the prospect of fleeing into such a derelict state was certainly a chilling death sentence. A Brutal Chill in August will be released by Word Horde in August 2016.
greydog: Thank you very much for joining us, and good fortune with A Brutal Chill in August.
alan: Thank you. Often I don’t have time to think of good answers when people are asking about my creative process, but here you’ve given me more practice. I enjoyed answering the questions. Good luck to greydogtales!
You can find out more about Alan and his work at his website alan m clark . Here are links to just some of his books:
the surgeon’s mate: a dismemoir
We’ll link up to A Brutal Chill in August again nearer the time. You can also get two of the Victims series in one ebook – double event.
And here’s the .pdf with details of Alan’s art in this post – PublishingAndCopyrightInformation
We’re worded and weirded out. We’ve done a lot of interviews recently, so we’ll have a short break for general writing, lurchering and other pieces. Back in a couple of days with that sort of thing…
Thanks Angela. Shall link to and mention DandiFluff as well.