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A Colossus of Mars: John Guy Collick

May 6, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Gripping science fantasy, Shakespeare in Russian, working with editors, and the Moomins. What else could it be except one of our mega-interviews? Today we feature the erudite John Guy Collick – author, scholar, cinematographic critic, lecturer and a man who bought us the odd pint in the late seventies. That last one is perhaps the most important fact. John has just completed his four volume epic The Book of the Colossus, and it seemed a damned good time to corner him…

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, John. This is an unusual interview for us, because it’s also a sort of reunion. So we’ll start with John Guy Collick the person, and shift to your own fiction a little later on.

We knew each other on and off in the eighties, as part of the venerable and vocal Leeds Science Fiction movement – some of whose members were a moving force in the creation of the SF magazine Interzone. Do you have fond memories of those days, or was it all a terrible dream?

john: Fantastic memories, especially of Friday nights in the West Riding pub. I used to get there about 7-ish so the only other fan around was D. West who we sadly lost last year – who used to sub me with his somewhat scrawny rollies and the occasional 50p for fish and chips on the way home. It wouldn’t be too much of an exaggeration to say that Leeds SF made me what I am and it’s great to be in touch with the other members again after so many years via Facebook. Of course the two crowning achievements of Leeds SF when I was around were Yorcon 79 and the film Invasion Des Bollardes Enormes, which would have re-written Indie fan film-making if it hadn’t been stolen the night after it was completed, probably by powers who Did Not Want The Truth To Be Known.

john collick (l) & the late d west (r) — the picture they wanted to ban – john collick channels western noir (l) with the late d west. photo courtesy of gifted fellow thespian simon ounsley

greydog: D was a hugely talented artist, and a great loss. And we still remember the shocking Bollardes incident. Now, you’re a scholarly sort compared to us grizzled old dogs, and you lecture. Tell us a bit about the subjects you cover on the podium.

john: In the old days I used to give lectures on literature and philosophy in Japanese to an audience of up to 450 students at Waseda University in Tokyo though whether I made any sense or not is still up for discussion. These days I go to conferences and give talks about education and technology, which I usually cunningly twist round to the themes of cyberpunk, science fiction and futurology. Outside the UK these subjects are taken far more seriously, and that’s very gratifying. Recently I’ve been talking quite a bit about using SF to install a sense of wonder in kids so they get fired up about science and the universe etc… and this is getting a very positive response from teachers and Ministry of Education experts, especially in the ex-Soviet bloc countries. It’s a buzz to spend twenty minutes blathering on about H. G. Wells, Asimov and Tarkovsky to the Russian Minister of Education.

greydog: And you have an academic background in Shakespearian studies. This gives us an excuse to say how much his play Hamlet annoys us. Hours of watching a privileged ditherer wonder what to do and then get it wrong anyway (it did at least give us the line in Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers, where the protagonist looks at his tortoise Pat, and says “Now might I do it, Pat.”) Do you think we’re too harsh?

john: Watch the Russian film of Hamlet directed by Grigori Kozintsev – it’s a true masterpiece with a 100ft high ghost, loads of Eisenstein montage and tons of Kruschev-era Soviet politics chucked in. That’s how the play should be done, not as an introspective study of a procrastinator with his head up his bum but as a vast, brooding Piranesi-esque Gothic tale of politics, double dealing and passion. Olivier mangled the play in his film, turning it into a self-absorbed essay in cod psychology, and we’re still recovering.

greydog: You’ve sold us on that one. Can we also address the Moomin in the room while we have you here? You’ve also written about that Bohemian and unusual writer Tove Jansson. The Moomin stories, for us, were full of threat, mystery and strange longings, hardly kids’ tales. Do you feel she intended that, or was it a by-product of her own nature?

john: If I remember rightly, the Moomintroll started off in Jansson’s paintings as a symbol of encroaching Nazism (Watercolour with Black Moomintroll, painted in Germany in 1934), round about the time Tove Jansson fell out with her dad, who’d turned into a bit of a fascist. So she’d already created him as a conscious symbol of menace before putting him into the books and comics (she transferred that original negativity to the character of the Groke).

As a kid I always thought there was something oddly melancholic about the later Moomin books, and towards the end they got downright weird. Instead of going off on adventures the family spent more and more time sitting around moping existentially, and then in the last book Moominvalley in November, they completely disappeared.

Jansson herself battled with the frustration of trying to be an artist while at the same time dealing with this immense fame and attention the books brought her. She wanted to go live on an island with her girlfriend (on whom Too Ticky is based) and just paint, but people followed her in boats so she had to throw rocks at them to make them go away. In Moominpappa at Sea, Moominmama goes and hides in a painting because she’s sick of everyone – and I think Jansson really identified with that – and probably wrote the scene deliberately. When you read her non Moomin writing and about her work in general it’s clear she was a very canny artist, so yes, she knew what she was doing

greydog: It seems that film has always been a great part of your life. In the eighties we remember you making those short films, and you’ve written many critical pieces in this area. Share a bit of your passion with the listeners.

john: On no account whatsoever read the book The Guerrilla Film Makers Handbook by Chris Jones and Genevieve Jolliffe, Continuum Press 3rd Edition, available for £32.99 from Amazon. It is a truly evil tome that should be destroyed – even worse than the Necronomicon. On the surface it looks like a simple collection of interviews with all the people involved in making an indie movie but it worms under your skin until one day you wake up and find yourself in the all-consuming horrendous other universe of film production.

That’s what happened to me in Tokyo. I ended up writing and co-producing a movie (Let’s Do Talk) which was reviewed as ‘The Most Offensive Film I’ve Ever Seen’ in The Japan Times, although what happened off set was infinitely more lurid than what ended up on camera. One of the highlights was when a main actor came up to me and said ‘John, you have inspired me so much with your passion and creativity in making this film that I’m going to leave my wife and kids and become a writer!’

One of these days I’ll blog about the whole sorry tale, probably when the other production members are safely dead. Yes – film has always been a passion since my mum introduced me to Kurosawa, Bergman and Eisenstein in the days when BBC 2 showed classic foreign films instead of mindless rubbish.

greydog: You also seem to have a love for the pulps, and the era of Edgar Rice Burroughs – Barsoom and its wonders. Another friend, Neil Baker of April Moon Books (see once in an april moon), is seeking to put together an anthology of SF which captures the old joy of just ‘getting out there’. Have we lost some of that sense of open, go-for-it adventure in science fiction and fantasy?

john: I have a soft spot for ERB and the Barsoom series. I cut my teeth on A Princess of Mars as a kid and Warlord of Mars is the only book I ever read that had me on my feet and breathless at the end. Seeing the movie was a dream come true. Once in a while I enjoy reading swords and planets tales, though nothing comes close to 14-year old me, John Carter and Dejah Thoris. I don’t think we’ve lost that wild imagination and gripping sense of adventure in modern SF. Iain Banks certainly hit it for me with Consider Phlebas, and I’m working my way through Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Shadows of the Apt which is huge swashbuckling fun. I do love the old pre-Golden Age pulp tales though – you can’t beat Professor Jameson and the Zoromes, or early Clark Ashton Smith.

greydog: Huge fans of Neil R Jones’ Professor Jameson here (and CAS). Does anyone stand out for you in modern SFF?

john: At the moment – Adrian Tchaikovsky as I mentioned above, Gareth Powell and Gaie Sebold. I have a big stack of books I need to read through, Neil Asher, Charlie Stross etc. I find that reading another writer’s novels gets in the way of my own work when I’m actually writing, unless their style and approach is similar to what I’m trying to achieve, so I go through phases of reading comics, or classics that are completely different in style and setting to my own books. At the moment I’m working my way through Jodorowsky’s Incal series – I became a fan of his after seeing the documentary about his failed movie of Dune.

greydog: On to JGC the writer. You began your major work The Book of the Colossus with Thumb in 2013. When you drafted Thumb, did you do so in the knowledge that this would be a lengthy four book arc?

john: In the very beginning, no. It started as a germ of an idea from a dream I had in the early 1990s in which I saw a man in a blue robe in a desert standing in front of a vast body. People had been building this monster to save them but very quickly society had degenerated so that those who built the head fought the ones who’d crafted the hands etc. The story developed in my mind (and the body got bigger) and pretty soon I saw it as a four-book series, mainly because my favourite writer at the time was Gene Wolfe and I wanted to write something as weird and intriguing as the four volume Book of the New Sun.

The Thumb I published is version 3, with about ten false starts and a couple of very bad complete manuscripts before. Now that I’ve created the setting I can see there’s a lot more material I can turn into stories, though probably not with Max and Abby as their arc is pretty much complete. The other day I had the wild idea of another seven books about the Colossus, like Wolfe’s Long sun and Short sun series, but that would be another seven years of my life and I’ve probably come to this too late.

greydog: Is there a market or genre definition for Colossus with which you feel comfortable? We would settle for science fantasy, but we’re not entirely sure what that means. SF which isn’t tech-heavy? Fantasy with a harder, futuristic feel?

john: I saw it as Science Fantasy similar to Moorcock’s Hawkmoon/Count Brass books (another massive influence) – books set in a universe where the science is so advanced or outré that it’s indistinguishable from magic. I guess The Book of the Colossus is an extreme Dying Earth series as in Gene Wolfe’s Severian novels, or Jack Vance’s Rialto and Cugel books. John Jarrold told me he thinks it’s Space Opera.

I also wanted to write it as an ‘Indiana Jones meets Franz Kafka’ book – a straight forward action tale set in a fundamentally absurd universe. The setting is extreme to the point of semi-surreal, but the characters behave and act as if everything is perfectly normal. A couple of readers have found this disorienting – in Thumb people smoke cigarettes and listen to jazz in a fantasy Prague at the end of time in the shadow of a marionette half a million miles long. But the vast majority of readers have been overwhelmingly positive, so I think I managed to get it to work.

greydog: There’s another nostalgic blast, finding out that you’ve worked with John Jarrold, the agent/editor who is another old bar-friend from SF convention days. In general terms, what did you get out of working with an editor that made the process worth it – as opposed to doing it all yourself?

john: I couldn’t have got to the point I’ve reached without John’s coaching and editorial input, for which I’m eternally grateful. Even though the books were self-published I wanted them to be the same quality as a good professionally published series. John was (and is) utterly ruthless and tore the first version of Thumb to bits, which was exactly what I wanted and needed. With his help I think I’ve now got the basics under my belt and all I need to do now is constantly practice and experiment. In general terms, everyone should work with a good editor if you want a professional book at the end, and if you’re serious you need to pay for the best. You also need someone to tell you like it is (and be prepared to take criticism on the chin) and not what they think you want to hear.

greydog: And now the quadrilogy is complete, with the launch of Dark Feathered Hearts. Here’s a typically unfair poser – tease us into wanting to read the conclusion (if we didn’t already).

john: Everything’s bigger. If you’ve read the other three then in this last book the threats, twists and encounters increase exponentially to encompass the whole of humanity’s future. Is it actually possible for humanity to build a God half a million miles tall who will carry it into the next universe, or is it all a deranged, desperate fantasy concocted by a species on the point of extinction? For the first time the price of Max and Abby’s failure really will be the destiny of mankind. If you haven’t read any of the books then think Indiana Jones meets Kafka, and also that several of my readers have told me that the story has given them disturbing dreams – what more could you ask for?

greydog: This is a good time to mention the covers as well, which are very striking. The covers of Thumb and Dark Feathered Hearts in particular are reminiscent of the work of Bruce Pennington and other artists of the eighties. A deliberate choice?

john: Yes – Chris Foss and Bruce Pennington were the two giants of 70s/80s UK SF covers for me. I wanted to recreate the feel of a NEL or Sphere paperback from that era and Pennington’s work is so wonderfully exotic – a fantastic blend of the baroque and the semi surreal with a very distinctive and bold palette. Even his simplest paintings (for example his cover to Van Vogt’s The Silkie) carry this wonderful fin de siècle vibe. The cover to Dark Feathered Hearts is a deliberate tribute to his work – the floating tetrahedrons in the sky are taken from his cover to Brian Aldiss’s Space, Time and Nathaniel. I also wanted each cover to illustrate a key scene from the book, rather than be just a more generic mood-piece SF or Fantasy painting.

greydog: We must end with our usual question – where next? Sit back on your laurel wreath and watch The Book of the Colossus work its way across the world, or grapple with new fiction?

john: I’ve got decades of ideas stacked up so it’s no rest for me. Like I said I feel I came to this a bit too late so it’s a race to get them all down on paper. I’ve worked out a system using Scrivener and top-down planning which should allow me to write a book a year, though I’d like to go faster. I’m working on the next one now – it’s a completely different setting to The Book of the Colossus – a bit more down to earth but still SF. With a fair wind behind me it should finished by the start of next year.

greydog: Many thanks again, and we wish you good fortune with Dark Feathered Hearts.

john: Thank you!

You can find John at home on his blog here – john guy collick and his books are on Amazon. Here are quick links for the first and the last volumes of The Book of the Colossus –

thumb on amazon uk

thumb on amazon us

dark feathered hearts on amazon uk

dark feathered hearts on amazon us

Coming up next week: An introduction to the greydogtales family of little donkeys (dogs, to you), a feature about Clark Ashton Smith and a new film, plus lots more…

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A Ginger Horror: Jim McLeod Finds Out Where We Live

April 20, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

Today’s mega-interview is hard-hitting, includes some rude words, and is predominantly ginger. Yes, it’s Jim McLeod, taking a break from running that major horror fiction and film review site, Ginger Nuts of Horror, to bring joy and vitriol to our mild, puzzled lives.

Jim has many outstanding qualities – for example, he’s got a beard, and he comes from the well-known Yorkshire colony of Scottish-land (a little geography for our far-flung listeners). He’s also fun to know. Join us now and hear the truth about, uh, quite a lot of things…

Warning: There is a small amount of effing and jeffing involved. If you are a lurcher of a sensitive disposition, or a writer who thinks a spell-checker is the same as an editor, you might want to be prepared. The opinions expressed below belong to somebody, probably.

jim mcleod — a passing Scotsman, just as the sedative dart began to work

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Jim. We would say that it’s a great honour to have you here, but we’re dour Yorkshire folk and don’t believe in crawling.

What we do appreciate is you finding the time to join us, considering the amount of work you put into your site Ginger Nuts of Horror. So we want to look at that side of things first. For people who don’t know much about GNoH’s origins, how did it all start?

jim: Well that’s a story in itself. It all started six or seven years ago. I have no concept of time-frames – I ought to know because my daughter was just about to turn one year old. Yes I know I should know how old my daughter is and I’m a terrible parent, I’ll burn in hell, probably at the hand of my daughter Cthella.

So I was on a three month absence from work after getting my left wrist rebuilt. Apparently I had spent the previous seven years going around with a broken wrist and not realising it. I’m hard as hell, or as my wife says, stupid as hell for not going to the doctor earlier. And while mucking about on the internet I came across THE BRITISH HORROR NOVELS FORUM, a great message board that has sadly been killed off by Facebook. Inhabiting that space were such reprobates as William Meikle, Ian Woodhead, and a few other authors.

I can’t remember if it was Ian or William who suggested that I start interviewing authors on the forum. The interviews took a form of question and response on the forum and went on for as long as the natural discussion allowed. After a few weeks of doing this William suggested I started my own blog. It was supposed to be called THE GINGER NUTCASE OF HORROR as I am ginger, if you haven’t figured that out, and nutty about horror. However, thanks to being off my nuts on really strong prescription painkillers I registered the name as Ginger Nuts of Horror.

Looking back six or seven years later I would never have imagined that what started off as something to do while recovering from a major operation would have grown into one of the biggest horror review websites out there, let alone ever thinking that I would interview Joe Dante, Graham Masterton, Joe Hill, Simon Clarke, and numerous other heroes of mine. And never would have thought that it would take up so much of my life. I work night shifts, and on my day/nights off I get up at 4am just to keep up with the number of emails, reviews and interviews that I have to deal with.

greydog: We tend towards the weird, which often includes horror but which ranges across a lot of genres and interests. How do you set your own site’s boundaries? There must be areas which are too peripheral or too unpleasant for you to want to include – or is it case-by-case every time?

jim: It used to be easier when I was the only reviewer on the site, as I have a pretty strict and conservative set of values and morals. So the extreme side of horror was never going to be touched upon by myself, it’s just not my thing. Hell, I skip over any naughty business in horror books. But in more general terms I think horror is a pretty all-encompassing genre – you can go from the quiet end of the spectrum with the ghost stories of M R James, right up to the extreme end of the spectrum from the likes of Matt Shaw, but it can take in everything from Aliens, Bizarro, Terminator, serial killers, big hairy monsters and psycho clowns. To me horror is a feeling not a genre.

And now that we have a great team of reviewers I’m more open to cover the extreme side of it, mainly thanks to the contributions of Dawn Cano’s extreme horror fiction reviews and Alex Davis’ excellent extreme Horror column FILM GUTTER.

The rest of the spectrum is covered by Kit Power, George Illet Anderson, George Daniel Lea, Charlotte Bond, Duncan Ralston, and Kayleigh Marie Edwards, John Boden, plus Andrew Freudenberg and Adrian Shotbolt, who are taking the lead with the music side of the site.

I’m so lucky to have such strong team of reviewers, who are also a great bunch of guys and gals, ones I am proud to call friends.

greydog: We even know some of these terrifying people, but we wouldn’t dare let them loose on here. Despite that fact that you cover films, news, views and all sorts of horror-related matters, would we be right in saying that horror fiction, the written word, is still the heart of your work?

jim: It is and it isn’t. Personally I have become really disillusioned with the fiction side the genre. There seems to be a real sense of entitlement within the writer community these days. You know the sort, the ones who will spend all day posting that coffee writer meme, interspersed with whinging posts about bad reviews. They forget that writing is all about paying the dues – these are ones who slap a book together, think they can edit it themselves then slap it up on Amazon and wonder why they aren’t a best seller. It’s a rising problem and one that is really pissing me off. Christ, I’ve had death threats over book reviews.

And yet this has never happened from the film side of the genre, and you should read some of my film reviews, that’s where I really fly off the handle and let my piss and vinegar spurt forth with unfiltered glee.

Having said that it probably still is the heart of the site even if it feels a bit rotten at the moment.

greydog: Fortunately we don’t feel entitled. We just write the stuff and beg for as many cents a word as possible. Or free meaty bones and chicken carcasses. Now, we’re not going to ask how people can get a mention on GNoH. They should be able to work that out for themselves if they want to get on in the world (we know, we’re harsh). We’re more curious about what happens next. There are many published works with potential, or brilliant concepts, which aren’t quite there yet. How do you tackle reviewing those awkward animals?

jim: I always review with an honest and open mind. I try and not be mean with my reviews, but if the book/ film is crap the book/film is crap. And I don’t care who created it. There a number of sites out there who are either beholden to advertising revenue or some misbegotten notion that you can make a living out of reviewing horror, and they will give positive reviews to films and books just to keep on the good side of writers, agents and publicists. I don’t care about that. Hell, one of the big American publishers won’t send me books anymore after my damning review of a book from a BIG name in horror. I know I’ll never get an interview with the author now, but at least I know I told the truth about the book.

And before anyone says all reviewing is subjective, yes it is, but there is a line where subjectivity means nothing and something is just badly made.

greydog: Last year a number of writers put together the book Jim McLeod Must Die as a tribute to you and your work with GNoH, but it must sometimes seem like a thankless task. You mentioned threats. Do you get much hassle from people believing they deserve your attention or applause?

jim: Oh god yes, I had to block two authors this month for constantly asking me when the review of their book was going up. If you submit a book or film to the site without reading the submission guidelines then it’s your own fault if you don’t understand that I don’t generally reply to submissions until the review is posted. I get over a hundred emails a day that actually require me to read them, I don’t have time to reply. And even if I do reply on submission it’s not a contract that I will actually review your book. Submitting a book or film to the site just means that we have added it to basically is a watch list. To put it in perspective the current list of books which have made it onto the review list sits at over 400 books. Even if all of the reviewers reviewed one book a week it would take us close to a year to clear the list. Which is a stupid thing to even consider.

Last year I ended up in hospital with blood poisoning, they reckon I was at six hours away from dying if I hadn’t gone into hospital, I posted a Facebook post after spending two days in hospital telling everyone what had happened and not worry about my Facebook silence. I got thousands of messages of support, but one tactless author, and I use that term loosely, actually sent me a message along these lines

“I know you are in hospital, but I thought you might like to read my new novel and review it when you get out of hospital”

Seriously WTF? I really believe that at my funeral there will be a line of half arsed writers waiting to ask my family if there is an unposed review of their book on my hard drive. Fuck it, I bet you £1000 there will be some fucknut trying to get a review from beyond the grave with a Ouija board.

I have had death threats, idiot writers getting their fans to down vote my reviews on Amazon, threats against my family. And even some nut job writer sending me a letter written in their own blood. To be honest I find it all rather funny, that anyone could get so worked up about a genre where no one is ever going to be famous. There will never be another Stephen King, take the review and deal with it.

greydog: We would only ever write to you in someone else’s blood – we like to hang on to ours. As far as the range of your site goes, film is an area we avoid, maybe because it’s often even more subjective than fiction (and we don’t have enough time as it is). What slid you into that area – readership demand or something else?

jim: It was purely a way of getting a bigger audience, plus a small pinch of being able to have a lot more fun with the reviews. I think films are easier to write bad reviews for. I can’t remember what film it was but my review of the film was a half-finished game of hangman, The answer to which was “HELL NO”.

The larger audience is also why we have broken out into music and now art. The horror fiction side of it is a small market. After a while you find you are just talking to the same crowd, and I want the effect of the reviews to reach as big an audience as possible. Not for some sad ego trip, but just so all of the great writers who I love can get that extra bit of exposure. The site has never been about me, that’s why I never put my name to any reviews I write.

greydog: While we have you, we also wanted to ask about small presses, because you’ve done a lot of work promoting books from them. It’s a subject we touch on here every so often. We still see them as the engines which drive a lot of unusual and innovative fiction to the marketplace. On the other hand, a number of writers now self-publish right from the start. Any thoughts?

jim: Self-publishing only works when the writer treats it as a professional project. And you can tell which writers do this. Anyone who thinks self publishing is easy or an excuse to not get a decent cover image, or even have another person edit your book, is on a road to nowhere. The small presses have changed over the years, especially here in the UK, where they seem to be more of a place for established writers to publish limited editions of their work. There are still some small presses publishing new writers, such as Horrific Tales, Boo Books, Pendragon Press and Nightwatch/Black Shuck books to name a few. But a lot of the more established ones are just publishing the same old names.

Which I can understand as the margins of profitability can all rest on the sale of one copy of a book. So I can get why they publish writers with a proven track base.

greydog: Let’s turn more to Mr McLeod himself. Getting greydogtales together on time is often nightmarish, and yours is a much larger and more complex site. How do you juggle the site, work and life?

jim: By spending every waking minute working on it. I’m lucky in that I work nights and my usual shift pattern means I have a lot of free time without the kids. So as I said, on my nights off you will often see me get up at 4am just to clear the backlog. I’m lucky in that I can get by with very little sleep. However it has meant that a lot of my other hobbies have fallen by the wayside. This is the year that I am determined to get back on my mountain bike. You’ll notice a drop in posts/reviews from me when the schools are on holiday, as I would rather be out having fun with the family.

greydog: What’s a good day off, away from horror and GNoH?

jim: A good day off involves the family and a nice big hill to climb. I love getting out there with my kids and partner, whether it’s a day of hillwalking or a visit to a museum, it really doesn’t matter so long as I get to spend time with them.

introduced by jim, and not for the faint-hearted

greydog: There’s some strange stuff out there. Do you personally ever get grossed out by the books or films that you’re asked to consider?

jim: Not very often, even something like Martyrs. Watched that with very little emotional attachment, right up until they forced fed her with a spoon, the noise of the spoon or fork scrapping of her teeth, freaked me out. I don’t know what that says about me psychologically but that is about the only time a film has really grossed me out.

greydog: We were quite upset by the Ghost Rider films – but that was because they turned out to be crap. You’re pretty steeped in the field. Ever considered writing yourself?

jim: Never, I know I don’t have the skill to do it. I do not subscribe to the notion that everyone has a book in them, there are some writers out there who shouldn’t even write a shopping list let alone a novel.

Having said that I did start to write a story composed sole of phrases from that terrible Horror Writers phrasebook that was published last year. I posted it as a live writing experiment on facebook, but I sadly lost the original document before I could finish it. It was awesome if I say so myself. So if anyone happens to have a copy of the last update of it please send it over. i would love to finish it.

greydog: Call our hotline now if you know where Jim’s last update is. Every pound raised goes towards supporting a cranky old Yorkshireman and his dogs. And just to be mean, how about finishing with a bit of name-dropping. Who really does it for you as a reader, rather than as a reviewer/website supremo, at the moment?

jim: For me right now, it’s a mix of old favourites like Adam Nevill, Gary McMahon, William Meikle, John Llewellyn Probert, Sarah Pinborough, and Brian Keene. Mixed in with new writers like Kayleigh Marie Edwards, Kit Power, J.R. Park, Duncan Bradshaw, Lee Thompson, James Everington, Phil Sloman, Laura Mauro, VH Leslie (Laura & Victoria featured in our feature scary women again), Cate Gardener – the list goes on and on. I really think we are in a golden age of talent.

Greydog: Many thanks, and the very best for Ginger Nuts of Horror in the future.

Jim: Thanks for having me. I have had a blast taking part. It’s not often I get to be on the other side of the fence, it’s a lot more fun than my side.

And don’t forget that you can find a wealth of trivia, news and hard-hitting reviews every week here on Jim’s site:

ginger nuts of horror

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Remember, you can now buy the new John Linwood Grant bestseller, “A Study in Grey” (or Gray, if you’re American). We say bestseller, but that’s what you’re for, dear listeners. Link on the right-hand sidebar. Not that we’re begging or anything, but…

Next time on greydogtales: We interview Nicholas Cage to find out why, although we think he’s done some great stuff, a lot of his films are utter rubbish. No, we’re lying again. It’ll be dogs and the weird, with probably a tad less horror.

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Eoliths and Nephilim: A Word with Cobweb Mehers

April 13, 2016 greydogtales 1 Comment

There is an unsettling shiver on the air, a darkness on the waters where the light should fall… yes, it’s Folk Horror Time once more, and today we have a mover in the movement, that gifted artist (and occasional writer) Cobweb Mehers with us to talk about everything from Goth music to sculpture and the art of the Upper Palaeolithic. We make it sound as if we know what we’re talking about, and Cobweb makes it clear that he does. It’s our big interview for this week, so we’ll get straight down to it…

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales, Cobweb. Many of your areas of interest seem to overlap with ours, so we may be testing you today, quite unfairly. We first came into contact via the Folk Horror Revival movement. Did you yourself get involved with the Revival from a folklore background, a love of horror, or both?

cobweb: Initially I got involved to support a friend. Andy Paciorek (see interview with the weirdfinder general) had some very big ideas and his enthusiasm and vision was a little contagious. It was a genre I was only vaguely aware of by name but I was already very at home in that aesthetic. I enjoy a lot of the related music and films but my real interest lies more with folklore inspired art. It was through Andy’s Strange Lands book that I started to get to know him, so that was my starting point.

I’m very excited about the various projects the group is looking at for the future. There is an enormous wealth of musical, artistic, and literary talent within the group and it’s great to see people interacting and bouncing ideas around. There’s so much more going on in the background that you don’t really see on the Facebook group. It really is the start of a revival and evolution of Folk Horror and I expect to see great things come from it.

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES — field studies, mehers

greydog: We agree with that, and are enjoying the Revival immensely. You may have noticed that despite the lure of dark forests and sacred groves, we draw a lot of inspiration from the sea and its boundary with the land. Do you have any affinity for the cold grey waters, or are you a woodsman when you seek out folk influences?

cobweb: I’m very much a sacred groves kind of person. I lean far more towards Machen’s Pan than Lovecraft’s Deep Ones, but I do have a thing for liminal zones. When I lived on the North East coast my favourite thing was to walk deserted beaches in thick fog. You’re caught between the sea and the land but both are silent and indistinct.

greydog: It’s a perfect moment. Now, you’ve spoken elsewhere of your admiration for the group The Fields of the Nephilim. As we don’t really cover enough music here (and we love their album Dawnrazor), maybe you could say a bit about this for our listeners?

cobweb: Dawnrazor was a revelation to me. I was 15 when I first heard it and it completely changed the way I saw the world. Initially it was more a case of atmosphere and style but the substance came with time. They’re a band I’ve grown up with and they’ve grown with me. I’m still finding new ideas and inspiration in their work. Fields of the Nephilim have been a catalyst for most of what I’ve done in one way or another.

When I first discovered the internet in the late 90’s I spent many happy hours dissecting their lyrics with other fans and discussing the inspiration behind songs. I established friendships with people across the world who shared my interests in the esoteric, ancient history, archaeology, and myth. Most of them I’ve since met in the flesh and count amongst my closest friends.

It was through his work on the first Fields of the Nephilim videos that I got to know Richard Stanley. While we no longer see eye to eye, it was Richard who first invited me to visit Montsegur and experience the high strangeness of the Languedoc up close and extremely personally. It’s an amazing part of the world; initially I was drawn to it as during the Middle Ages it was a melting pot of esoteric and heretical ideas from across Europe and the Middle East, but there have been people there for over thirty thousand years so there’s a lot more to it.

In the Upper Palaeolithic it was where all the coolest artists and magicians hung out and it has been ever since. I fell in love with the region and go back whenever I can to climb the mountains of the gods, visit the sacred groves, and explore lost ruins and secret caves.

greydog: Speaking of the offspring of fallen angels (cheap link), we were always disappointed that the Book of Enoch was considered non-canonical – Azazel and the Watchers etc. And then we saw your piece about the Biblical Nephilim in the Folk Horror Revival book ‘Field Studies’. What interests you about this particular theme?

cobweb: It’s a subject I’ve been obsessed with for decades. It actually predates my love of Fields of the Nephilim and is what initially made me listen to the band. The reason it interests me has changed dramatically over the years as I’ve discovered more about it. The mythology grew out of a pivotal moment in the history of civilisation. On one level it’s our way of coping with the leap from nomadic hunter-gatherers to settled agriculturalists.

There are definite historical events that lie behind it that are probably nowhere near as exotic as the stories, but there’s also a spiritual aspect to what happened that’s much harder to pin down and unsettlingly pervasive. What may come down to little more than an argument about sharing technology and a fear of climate change thousands of years ago still forms the basis of the way we perceive the world. We can’t forget even if we can’t quite remember what it is we can’t forget. It’s something I find endlessly fascinating.

greydog: Let’s talk about your artistic work. You’re the talent behind Eolith, which specialises in a range of striking mythic and pre-history sculptures. Is the work you do for Eolith your main day-to-day focus, or just one of many sidelines?

cobweb: Eolith Designs is the platform for any work that’s my own idea rather than for commissions. I try to make it my main focus but I get distracted by other projects from time to time. I’ve just finished a cover design for Volume 6 of Cumbrian Cthulhu (cumbrian cthulhu), which I think comes out in the Autumn, and I’ll be doing some illustrations for upcoming Folk Horror Revival fiction releases.

swimming reindeer low res version — swimming reindeer, mehers

greydog: We believe that you contributed to the British Museum’s exhibition “Ice Age art: arrival of the modern mind” a few years ago, is that right?

cobweb: Initially the British Museum wanted to sell some of my Ice Age art inspired sculptures in conjunction with the exhibition. I also offered to create a new work based on one of the pieces in the exhibition. It’s a thirteen thousand year old carving called The Swimming Reindeer and it means a lot to me personally but I’d not accounted for anyone else being as interested in it as I was. I expected to sell a dozen at most but it was insanely popular. I spent nearly a year doing little more than making reindeer and three years after the end of the exhibition they’re still selling them.

greydog: Which do you prefer, the detailed recreation of a genuine early artefact or having licence to experiment with mythological imagery?

cobweb: The Swimming Reindeer is the only sculpture I’ve done where I deliberately set out to do a detailed recreation. The British Museum sent me loads of very nice photographs and that forced me to work in a completely different way than I usually do. Even that isn’t an exact reproduction, but having seen mine in the same room as the original it isn’t far off.

The work I’ve done based on genuine artefacts has generally been a result of me trying to get inside the head of the original artists and work out why they did things the way they did. Everything is an experiment and an exploration of ideas. I do a lot of research before I start anything and I sculpt quite slowly so the process forces me to spend a long time focused on thinking about one particular thing and that is gradually distilled into the final piece.

albion - a prophecy, mehers — albion – a prophecy, mehers

greydog: You also do ‘flat’ art, of course. Do you find it less satisfying than sculpture?

cobweb: I probably paint and draw more than I sculpt, but I approach 2D art in an entirely different way. I use it for more immediate things; recording dreams and visions and things glimpsed at the more exotic ends of the consciousness spectrum. It’s not the kind of thing that lends itself well to going on people’s living room wall. I’ve been pondering putting a book together for a while now, as I think that would probably be a better format for them, but it’s finding the time.

greydog: We read once that you have an interest in Ugaritic studies, which would seem terribly niche except that we do too. In our case, it’s because of the Dagon/Ioannes connections and the whole Hittite and Sumerian mythology scene. This is an amazing resource for the stranger branches of fiction, including the Cthulhu Mythos writers – and bits of our own work. How did you get into the subject?

cobweb: This was another side effect of my Nephilim obsession. The Nephilim turn up in Canaanite myth as The Healers and they feature in the literature found at Ugarit. I very quickly developed a fondness for Canaanite culture and mythology. There’s a deceptive simplicity to it and a humanity that’s very easy to relate to even today. I have a particular affection for the goddess Anat; there’s a touch of genius to personifying war as a teenage girl. The Devourers are also worth looking into. They’d be right at home in a Lovecraft story.

greydog: As you know, weird fiction is at the heart of greydogtales. We’re guessing that you’re quite well-versed in that area – which writers resonate with you?

cobweb: I don’t read a lot of fiction these days but when I do it tends to be the classics of that particular genre. I discovered Lovecraft first and again that was down to Fields of the Nephilim. We’ve become overly familiar with him in many ways and he’s not taken seriously enough. He’s not the greatest writer from a technical point of view but there are still things in his work that are actually really scary even after repeated rereads.

Machen I identify much more with and I enjoy his non-fiction as well as his stories. I’d love to have met him partly because I have a lot of questions, but mostly because I think we’d have got on really well. I’m also quite keen on Lord Dunsany and have been known to dabble with Clark Ashton Smith.

the great god pan by sgorbissa, deviantart

greydog: And to finish with, our perennial question – what’s coming from you in the next year? Any plans or projects you’d like to share with us?

cobweb: I have a couple of new sculptures in progress that should see the light of day before too long. One is my interpretation of what archaeologists call Judean pillar figurines, because archaeologists have no imaginations. The other one will eventually be one of a pair and is an exploration of ideas about the Nephilim covering a lot of history and geography. His other half will have to wait for a while though because the big project for the rest of this year will be jewelry.

I started my artistic career making jewelry and it was always something I intended to come back to when I started Eolith Designs. I’m really just aiming to make tiny wearable sculptures in silver.

greydog: Thank you very much, Cobweb Mehers, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. If you’d like to see, or know more about, Cobweb’s sculpture and design work, have a look here:

eolith designs

Not forgetting the music – if you don’t know the Neph then you can listen to the Dawnrazor track itself here:

And why not try exploring the Folk Horror Revival. We think it’s great. The website’s below, and the first book’s on the sidebar.

folk horror revival website

Next time: Don’t ask. Just don’t ask. Our brains hurt, and the dogs need to go out…

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Joshua Reynolds: Royal Occultist with a Warhammer

April 8, 2016 greydogtales Leave a comment

What can we say about Joshua Reynolds? Founder of the Royal Academy of Arts, noted 18th century portraitist knighted by George III in 1769… wait a minute. Who wrote these notes? Django!!! Bad dog. This is the wrong Reynolds, you daft animal. Uh, right. Today’s guest is the other guy, Joshua M Reynolds, who, well, he writes stuff. Good stuff.

one of our researchers, now on a warning

Yes, it’s greydogtales, the only site still using lurchers for in-depth research and a labrador as a doorstop. It’s muddy here, and so our notebooks are covered in bloody great paw prints, but we’ll see what we can do.

Our guest writer is well known in at least two quite separate fan circles, and if they ever meet we may need more than longdogs to keep them in order. For Warhammer enthusiasts, Joshua Reynolds has written – and is still writing – a number of novels based on those heady days of utter carnage, betrayal and mad zealotry.

99129915027_StartCollectingDeamonsofKhorne02 — friday night in any yorkshire town

If you’re not familiar with it, Warhammer is one of those things you do with a table-top when you’re not chopping up chicken carcasses. Scary lead and plastic figures creep into the madness that lies beyond the tomato ketchup, and there are even more rules for where you put the cake knife.

On the other hand, you may prefer the spine-chilling, rather stylish adventures of Charles St Cyprian, the Royal Occultist, for Mr Reynold’s other main endeavour is chronicling the adventures of this renowned occult detective. Set mostly in the 1920s, the tales follow in the footsteps of William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki, except that St Cyprian is a rather more droll and stylish fellow.

“Formed during the reign of Elizabeth I, the post of the Royal Occultist, or ‘the Queen’s Conjurer’ as it was known, was created for and first held by the diligent amateur, Dr. John Dee, in recognition for an unrecorded service to the Crown. The title has passed through a succession of hands since, some good, some bad; the list is a long one, weaving in and out of the margins of British history and including such luminaries as the 1st Earl of Holderness and Thomas Carnacki.”

no, django, that's the wrong one again — no, django, that’s the wrong joshua reynolds again

Let’s see if we can get any of this right in our interview…

12921129_10209505367737001_742100169_n — the real author, honest

greydog: Welcome to greydogtales. Important stuff first – Josh or Joshua? Or Mr Reynolds, Sir, in our case?

josh: Josh is fine. Or Joshua. Or Your Most Squamous Majesty. Face-Eating Willy. Tupelo Jim Smalls. Clyde. I answer to most anything, really.

Except Tupelo Jim Smalls. Not any more. I got my reasons, and I’ll thank you not to ask.

greydog: We wouldn’t think of it. Right, we dragged you here mainly because two of your recent stories stirred our old brain cells. The first was The Fates of Dr Fell, an excellent twist on the old portmanteau idea of multiple stories, in the manner of the films Dead of Night and Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors (see our feature here: spawn of the ripper: the true story). Are you a horror film sort of guy?

josh: I am! The older, the better. Silver screams are the best screams. Keep your CGI, I want practical effects, goshdarnit. Gimme a guy in a grossly unrealistic gorilla suit, ambling awkwardly across a darkened Hollywood soundstage. That’s my jam.

That said, I have seen some newer stuff recently that I really enjoyed. From the Dark (2015) was a pretty swell vampire film which I encourage everyone to see, if they get the chance. It’s a good, old fashioned monster film with some nice sequences and plenty of mounting tension.

greydog: We can only agree. Films from the old days are still our favourites – but maybe we’ll try From the Dark now.

The second story that caught our eye was your novella The Door of Eternal Night, which manages to weave Arthur Conan Doyle and his creations into the tapestry. Both stories are part of the highly enjoyable Royal Occultist series, which seems to grow and grow. Is there a grand plan mapped out for Charles St Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass?

josh: Not as such. I know roughly how the series ends and when, but I’m in no hurry to get to it. There are still plenty of stories to be told before starting that particular grim fandango. Basically, I’m happy to write about St. Cyprian and Gallowglass haring about in their Crossley, shooting hobgoblins, as long as people are willing to read about it.

greydog: The Royal Occultist is the nearest thing we know of to our own Tales of Last Edwardian. They’re somewhat different, but both draw on the legacy of Thomas Carnacki, the Ghost Finder. How did you get involved with William Hope Hodgson’s work, and what made it appeal to you?

josh: I first came across Hodgson in an anthology called Grisly, Grim and Gruesome. The story was “The Horse of the Invisible”, which is still perhaps my favourite Hodgson story – Hodgson’s descriptions of the sounds the eponymous phantom makes still creep me out a bit, even today. Even then, I was drawn to the idea of someone investigating a haunting as if it were a mystery. I credit that story with sparking my love of not just Hodgson, but occult detective fiction as a whole, really.

greydog: In Sam Gafford’s anthology, Carnacki: The New Adventures, you actually have Carnacki meeting a young St Cyprian. Is this the ‘official’ origin story for St Cyprian’s involvement, or have we missed one?

josh: It is and you haven’t! “Monmouth’s Giants” is chronologically the first St. Cyprian story. That said, there are also several Carnacki/St. Cyprian adventures available, set during the Great War, when St. Cyprian was serving as Carnacki’s apprentice.

greydog: You grew up in South Carolina, yet the world of the Royal Occultist is very English. Did that come naturally from reading UK fiction, or did it require an awful lot of research? And spelling lessons, putting the ‘u’ back in color etc?

josh: A bit of both, really. I read a lot of period literature–Waugh, Wodehouse, Sayers, Allingham–and did plenty of research into English history, especially the inter-war period. Also, I live in England now, so there’s probably some sort of osmosis going on.

greydog: You have an impressive back-catalogue. Part of that includes work set in the Warhammer universe, and we did vote Nagash in the last election. At least he’s honest. Did you find writing in an established world like that one limiting?

josh: Nah. Limits make things interesting. There are always stories to tell, if you look hard enough. And established franchises are prone to having all sorts of intriguing nooks and crannies to explore. Places where new canon overlaps with old, and blank spaces on the maps.

Also, Nagash 2016. Serve him in life AND in death.

greydog: We’ve seen worse campaign banners. We’re interested in your authorial stance, which seems to be “I do a job”. A while ago someone asked how you got into a particular line, and you said: “I was scrounging around for submission opportunities and ran across X’s guidelines. I figured it was worth a shot, so I knocked out a novel pitch that day and submitted it.” You’re not into the ‘tortured artist having vapours in a Parisian attic’ routine, then?

josh: Ha! No. Writing is my profession, and I like to think I’m good at it. It’s what I do to make money, which I then use to pay my mortgage bill and buy groceries and such. To accomplish that, I have to treat it like a job…eight to ten hour days, invoices, taxes, the whole nine yards. As my old granny is known to say, ‘them vapours is not conducive to financial stability’.

greydog: A wise woman. Now, we always wonder what writers read. What sort of fiction do you use to relax? More in the fantasy and supernatural genres, or something quite different?

josh: If we’re talking about relaxing specifically (as opposed to inspiration), I like mysteries. Thrillers, procedurals, cozy, noir… I read ’em all. You give me a sewing circle or a washed-up actor or a cat solving crimes, and I’m a happy fellow. Too, I’m a mark for writers like Dorothy L. Sayers and Ernest Bramah. Real Golden Age of Detective Fiction stuff.

greydog: Bramah is sadly rather overlooked these days. His blind detective Max Carrados is an interesting read, though his tales of Kai Lung the Chinese storyteller, are even better. And we know you have more stories on the way. Any major projects for 2016 that you can share here?

josh: Well, hopefully, Infernal Express, the long-delayed third novel in The Adventures of the Royal Occultist series, will be out sometime soon. Not to mention the equally delayed second volume of Eldritch Inquests, the occult detective anthology I co-edited with Miles Boothe for Emby Press.

Novel-wise, there’ll also be a few Warhammer-related projects, but if I talk about those, they take away my cheese club privileges.

greydog: We’ll ask no more, then, but we’re coming in with our knuckle-dusters up for our last question. St Cyprian and Ebe Gallowglass versus Abigail Jessop and Henry Dodgson. Who’s going to win?

josh: Oh, that’s obvious. Us, when we rake in all that sweet, sweet box office money. I mean, we were planning to sell tickets, right?

greydog: We are now. Many thanks, Joshua M Reynolds (not an 18th century painter).

We do have an accidental publishing connection with Josh, although we didn’t know it until recently. His novella The Door of Eternal Night is part of the series The Science of Deduction from 18th Wall Productions, and our own contribution to the series, A Study in Grey, is due out this month.

door of eternal night on amazon

You can get the ebook from the link above. Josh can also be found on his writing website, here:

hunting monsters

Next week on greydogtales: Lurchers and folk horror, but not at the same time. Subscribe, or follow on Facebook, and you’ll know which posts to avoid (we’re sure we should put that more positively, somehow).

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