Author Interview: Lee Battersby

I'm very honoured to have Lee Battersby, one of Australia's foremost speculative fiction authors agree to this interview where he talks aboput his forthcoming debut novel
The Corpse-Rat King.

I was very fortunate to read an ARC of The Corpse-Rat King and you'll find a link to my review of the book at the end of this interview. But now I'll let the man speak for himself:

Tell us about your upcoming release The Corpse-Rat King from Angry Robot books. How did the story idea emerge?

‘The Corpse-Rat King’ tells the story of Marius dos Helles, a professional looter of battlefields and Olympic-quality coward, who is mistakenly acclaimed King of the Dead. The King is God’s representative on Earth, and they have not been admitted to the afterlife so they need one to talk to God and remind him that they’re down here, waiting. Once they realise that Marius is no King, they send him to find one. And as they say in the TV papers, hi-jinks ensue. It’s irreverent, highly cynical, and everyone says ‘fuck’ a lot more than they’re supposed to.

The idea originated from a dinner party conversation with Dave Luckett, a friend and fellow writer I’ve admired for many years. We were bemoaning some of the more obvious fantasy tropes, particularly those of the “everybody’s noble and shampoo seems to have been invented 500 years early” soft-focus variety. I started out to see if I could write something with some grit under the fingernails, and once I got started, my natural inclination to undermine everything and be ludicrous came bubbling out.

CRK is very character driven, one man’s quest to find the meaning of his life through his death. Does that mean Marius came into being in your mind easily and just how much did he drive your tale?

Marius is a fun character to write. He’s always looking for an angle; always willing to run away rather than do the right thing… he’s very much an extension of my belief about humanity in general. The entire story is about him: his reluctance to think beyond his own self-preservation, his unwillingness to assume responsibility, his journey from being utterly egocentric to becoming… well, not exactly philanthropic, but perhaps egocentric plus a couple of friends :) 

He’s centre-stage the whole time, because that’s how he sees himself. Everybody is the hero of their own story, and Marius takes that to the logical extreme. It takes a seismic shift to get him to see outside of his own welfare, and that’s half the fun of being a writer: taking a perfectly good, invented, human being, and fucking them up for 400 pages…

‘Marching Dead’ puts him at the centre of something bigger: too big for him to be able to remove himself from the welfare of the society around him. He has to evolve a conscience, and a sense of social responsibility, although it’s fair to say the growing pains are enormous.

Truth is, I don’t like noble characters much. Either they act nobly, in which case, where’s the character growth? Or they betray their own nobility, in which case you just think of them as shits because they’ve betrayed you. Much better to start with a character who’s honest to his own shitty nature and see if you can’t indulge him. That’s fun :)

You’ve had more than 70 short stories published in magazines across the globe and now you have your first novel. Was this your first attempt at writing a novel? Are there any other novels - finished or unfinished - gathering dust in a desk somewhere?

I’m currently finishing the first draft of a contracted sequel, ‘Marching Dead’, which I‘ll be handing in to Angry Robot sometime in the upcoming month. I did complete a novel before ‘Corpse-Rat King’ which a previous agent failed to place, and I’m a better enough novelist now that I’ll likely go back and rework that one over the next year or so and see if I can’t improve it sufficiently—the central idea is a good one, and it’s likely it’s just a shortfall in the author’s skill that’s let it down so far. At least, I hope so :)

I also wrote 52 000 words of a Father Muerte novel, ‘Father Muerte and the Divine’ whilst I was waiting for ‘The Corpse-Rat King’ to go through the Angry Robot Open Door Month process, and I’ll be going back to complete that. It’s my usual mish-mash of WTF moments and disparate weirdness: time-travelling Benito Mussolinis, intelligent dinosaur ghosts, Viking seer techniques….. when it’s written down like that I almost wish I was joking….

And I’ve got a few fun ideas waiting for me to get to them. I have an idea for a post-apocalyptic revenger’s tragedy I’m just foaming at the mouth to get to, and I’d love to write a Dying Earth fantasy, so if all goes well I’ve probably got enough projects to see me through the next three or four years.

CRK is the first in a series and at last check you’re 75,000 words into the sequel Marching Dead. Have you had much time to celebrate your success or have you been spending the evenings pounding the keyboard?

There’s no real success yet: I don’t consider selling the novel to a publisher a ‘success’ as such, because that’s what I was aiming to do in the first place. As pleased as I am to sell to someone like Angry Robot, it’s really just a case of job done, and completing the first step towards establishing a long-standing career as a novelist. The success will come if this novel sells well to the public, if it’s well-received, if it opens up new opportunities, if I can translate it into ongoing relationships with my agent and publisher… all things I would like, but over which I have zero control. Success is something I like to look back on, and right now I’m neck-deep in the process, so hopefully I’ll be able to look back on this period in a couple of years and pinpoint it as a successful beginning.

Your wife Lyn Battersby is also an esteemed writer – does that also make her your biggest critic? How much input did she have on CRK?

Lyn’s an astonishingly good writer: far more emotionally subtle and humane a writer than I am. She’s very quick to see if I‘ve become lazy or repetitive in my use of themes or approach, and she’s got a very good radar for those things I do that work, or which I need to spend some time improving. She didn’t have a massive amount of input into CRK, largely because she’s trying to fit her own writing in around working and studying at Uni, so pushing my stuff in front of her would have taken her away from her own stories, and I’m selfish in that I enjoy reading her stories so would rather she write one than read one of mine.

You work for Rockingham City Council - in the arts? You’ve administered some projects around writing, like story competitions. Can you tell us about that?

I’m the Coordinator of Cultural Development and the Arts, which means I bear responsibility for the promotion of arts practice within the City. There are over 100 000 people in the region, and engagement with the arts is an important factor in establishing and maintaining an active lifestyle. In regards to our literary programme, we’ve established an annual short fiction competition that utilises an image from the City’s Art Collection as its thematic base each year, and have incorporated a poetry competition as part of our annual Castaways Sculpture Awards. We participate in National Novel Writing Month through managing the Rockingham/Mandurah nano-region, and run a series of workshops in the months leading up to November where local writers can work with established pros: in the past we’ve worked with Kate Eltham, CEO of the Queensland Writers Centre, as well as authors such as Bevan McGuiness, Sherri-Ann Jacobs, Simon Haynes and Juliet Marillier, and we’ll be running workshops with Stephen Dedman and Amelia Beamer as part of this year’s program. We also ran a writing marathon last year called ‘The Night of Writing Dangerously’ as part of our ‘Nano’ program, and will be doing so again this year.

What we try to do is bring authors from the region together and help them build their capacity to work within the literary industry, and then provide opportunities to do so within a national framework. Last year we received short story entries from around the country, and the poetry competition even attracted entries from the US and Canada, so local authors have a chance to benchmark themselves against a wide range of other practicing authors, which can only be good for their development and the development of the literary arts in the region.

All of which is a very formal way of saying that we try to advance the literary arts by putting local authors in touch with established industry pros, give them outlets to practice their art, and try to help them think in new ways about their art and the industry in which they work.

 How do you see speculative fiction now with the emergence of the e-book and small press, particularly in Australia?

The small press has always been a major part of the Australian publishing scene: in terms of sheer population we just can’t support many major publishers, so those we do have play the game of highest numbers and can be conservative as a result. The small and micro-press scenes are really vibrant, and fascinating, and I’ve enjoyed being a part of it over the last decade or so. If I ever get my shit together and work towards a doctorate I’ll probably base my studies around the small-press culture and how it propagates.

As an author, though, I can’t quite get a handle on the e-publishing scene, particularly the self-publishing model. It seems particularly labour-intensive, in an industry where outlets already exist to take administrative tasks away from me and let me just get on with writing, and I’m not convinced that the economic payoff is there unless you have an already established reputation. I can see the benefit of releasing reprint material into the electronic market, but given the proliferation of electronic publishing clauses in traditional contracts these days I’m very cautious about the benefits of electronically self-publishing original material rather than bookending it onto a ‘dead-wood’ publishing deal.

That said, I have friends in the industry who are utterly convinced that the book is dead and we’ll be completing the full publishing cycle electronically within the next few years. Kate Eltham, for example, is highly articulate—not to mention far cannier than me—on the subject, and I’ll more than likely just steal all her ideas in a couple of years and look back on this interview with rolling eyes…

Who’s your favourite author (deceased)? Who’s your favourite author (still living) – and why?

God, end with an easy one, why don’t you? :)

Too many to name. Far too many. I’m a total bibliophile. Right now I’m re-reading Gene Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun series, so right now it’s Wolfe, but on any other day it’ll be Palahniuk, Lethem, Waldrop, Pratchett, Aldiss, Mieville… how long have you got?

My tastes tend to run towards people who straddle a line between genres: slipstream, or interstitial fiction, but that’s not absolute. Rather, I’m voracious. I’ll try anything once.

Read my review of The Corpse-Rat King

Review: Corrupts Absolutely? edited by Lincoln Crisler

Publisher: Damnation Books
ISBN: 978-1-61572614–1 (eBook)
Published: 13th April, 2012
Words: 83,780

Description:
Corrupts Absolutely? collects twenty brand-new stories from veteran authors and newcomers, each with a unique perspective on what it might really be like to be superhuman in today’s day and age. In the center of such a roiling mass of uncertainty and excitement lies one important truth: the fight against good or evil is never as important as the fight for or against oneself.

(Review first published at Thirteen O'Clock, June 2012)

Given I was raised on comic book superheroes like Superman, Batman, Spider-Man, the X-Men, The Teen Titans and others, the meta-human fiction anthology Corrupts Absolutely? was always going to have instant appeal for me.

Edited by dark fiction author Lincoln Crisler, Corrupts Absolutely? Sets out to take comic book heroes beyond the confining rectangular borders of comic pages into a prose format and, when taken as a whole, the stories pack as much punch as The Incredible Hulk on a bad day.

Borrowing from some of the more adult comics and graphic novels of the 1980’s, like Watchmen and V for Vendetta, the heroes (and villains) in these 20 tales are as human as the rest of us, with troubled pasts, crises of conscience and revenge on the mind. The theme of the anthology centres on how power can corrupt and each story rides that theme like a speeding bullet into catastrophe (ok enough of the metaphors).

From the very first tale – Tim Marquitz’s “Retribution” about a nuclear-powered man who exacts explosive revenge on a Middle Eastern village on the anniversary of the September 11 attacks – you know immediately that the interpretation of what is a “hero” in this volume, will ride a very thin grey line indeed.

In my view, the strongest tales are in the first half of the book. Bram Stoker Award-winning author Weston Ochse’s piece “Hollywood Villains”, about a young man who can make anyone do anything not only forces you to sympathise with the villain as he psychically torments some of Hollywood’s more unsavoury characters, but makes you feel that his victims deserved it.

Jeff Strand’s “The Origin of Slashy” focuses on the victim of a rape who decides to become a vigilante and kill men with sex on their mind. The matter-of-factness of Strand’s writing adds considerable impact and there’s certainly no hero in sight in his story.

Edward M. Erdelac’s “Conviction” is a fantastic gangsta style tale about a young man trying to distance himself from the wrong people, only to be pulled back in. Erdelac captures the language and character of Abassi exceptionally well and provides imagery that lasts well after the final sentence.

Other standouts included the darkly atmospheric “Mental Man” by William Todd Rose, Joe McKinney’s “Hero”, “Crooked” by Lee Mather, “Acquainted with the Night” by Cat Rambo and “Max and Rose” by Andrew Bourelle. “Gone Rogue” by Wayne Helge, a humorous tale that reminded me of the film Mystery Men was a welcome addition to break up all the angst.

The only downside to the anthology was that there were possibly a few too many stories that reminded me of a certain rich billionaire with a mechanised suit.

All in all, Corrupts Absolutely? was a great escape, providing very interesting pastiches of heroes and villains. Hopefully Mr Crisler might consider putting together a second volume in the not too distant future?

Author Interview: Martin Livings

Martin Livings' new tale Rope is now available in e-book format from Dark Prints Press - along with my novella Vaudeville.

I managed to nab Martin for a quick interview (make sure you check out the interview he did with me over at his blogsite)

- Tell us a little about yourself. Who is Martin Livings?

Ah, the eternal question. Who am I? Where did I come from? Well, I live in Perth, have a beautiful wife and a precocious guinea pig, love horror movies, and for twenty years this year I've been publishing short stories in as many different places as I can possibly manage, with over seventy acceptances so far. My first novel, CARNIES, was published by Hachette Livre in 2006, and was nominated for both the Aurealis and Ditmar awards, which was really gratifying. "Rope" is my first eBook, and I'm excited as hell to see it in the wild!

- Where did the inspiration for "Rope" come from?

 "Rope" was originally written for a proposed Western Australian horror themed four-novella collection, with stories written by three WA horror luminaries and, er, me. The collection didn't end up happening, though, and I believe all three of the other stories have since found good homes and critical acclaim, but "Rope" went in my bottom drawer until Craig from Dark Prints started asking for novellas. The rest, as the cliched say, is history. A good part of the inspiration for the story itself came from the fact that my mother actually went to school with Eric Edgar Cooke, the last man to be hanged at Fremantle Prison. That sparked the idea of looking at all of the executions that occurred there, so I dove in to the research and read detailed accounts of all forty-four hangings that took place in the prison. I realised that people always talked about the crimes and the aftermath, but very little attention was paid to the act of the hanging itself, probably because it's not a very nice subject. Reading newspaper accounts of forty-four hangings, then writing about them, wasn't necessarily the healthiest of things to do to my poor brain; I had bad dreams for weeks, which probably helped in the creative process in the end! I just wanted to explore what it would be like to witness so many deaths, to be responsible for them, and yet to believe yourself to be a good person. How it would change you. The story wrote itself from there, pretty much.

- What can we look forward to seeing from you next?

I'm incredibly excited to be launching my first short story collection, LIVING WITH THE DEAD, at the beginning of October at GenreCon in Parramatta. This collection is also from Dark Prints Press, and is basically my greatest hits compilation, the best of twenty years of hard horror slog, with twenty reprinted stories and three brand new ones. I can't wait for this to come out, it's going to be awesome!

- And finally, Beatles or Stones?

Beatles, duh! 

"Vaudeville" released!

My latest novella, Vaudeville, a coming-of-age horror tale, is now available to buy as an e-book from Dark Prints Press.

This is my third novella, with my previous works Torment and The Noctuary, being published by Damnation Books in the United States.

I'm very glad that Vaudeville found a home with an Australian small press, especially Dark Prints, as Craig Bezant is doing some great things for the genre.

Vaudeville and Rope, by West Australian author Martin Livings, are the first two titles to launch DPP's e-novella series and I feel very privileged to be sharing the stage with Martin.

For more information on Vaudeville and how to buy a copy go HERE.

Witch Hunts trailer and artwork competition!

Witch Hunts, the graphic novel I illustrated for authors Rocky Wood and Lisa Morton has garnered a fair bit of praise from the critics and hopefully we'll get a few more reviews from readers.

As a way of incentive, I've launched a competition to win some original Witch Hunts-inspired artwork:

If you want to win this all you need to do is post the weblink to your Amazon or Goodreads review of the graphic novel on our official Facebook page between now and August 1 and one lucky reviewer will win the prize to be announced on August 10.

So you all better get yourselves a copy!

Meanwhile the graphic novel was on display at the recent San Diego International Comic-Con which was a real dream come true for me (wish I'd been there!)

Despite this, promotions continue with the release of the unused Appendix from the graphic novel, which looks at the evolution of witchcraft iconography and the trailer that I created with sound effects guru Ricky Grove. Enjoy!

Guest Blogger: Author Benjamin Kane Ethridge

Very honoured to have Bram Stoker Award-winning horror novelist Benjamin Kane Ethridge on my blog talking about the myth behind his new novel Bottled Abyss. Take it away Ben!

Five Mythology Movies that didn't inspire BOTTLED ABYSS

By Benjamin Kane Ethridge

A little background before I start my spiel. My latest novel, BOTTLED ABYSS, is a reframing of the Ferryman and River Styx myth. Bound by a pledge to make things as difficult on me as possible, I sought to take the material to a different place, yet keep some essentials so the myth wasn’t buried in symbolism.

My reasoning for doing this was two-fold: 1) Horror always needs new monsters, and 2) Mythology is rarely used in popular entertainment the way I want to see it used.

I’ve read some amazing literary efforts that recast Greek and Roman mythology, but cinema always seems to fall short exploiting them to the fullest. Perhaps I haven’t seen the right movies, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t tried.

Myths represented in film never find any real evolution, which has always struck me as crazy because evolution, in this case the passing of a millennia since inception, feels pretty necessary.

Anyhow, being faithful to the blogging Gods, I’ve created a list of mythology movies that didn’t inspire me to write my book BOTTLED ABYSS.

Now, to be clear, while I did enjoy these movies for infinitely dissimilar reasons, reading actual mythology did more for my novel’s development. That elucidation is for another blog though. Yes, a stuffy, dusty-paged, mothball scented academic blog only enjoyed by a proof-reading Ben that orangutan-hops at his desk, so pleased with his astute references and clarifications.

1) Clash of the Titans

Pic: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGRgT5wmoOb6nbJMk1rbmdcALSvpnaIhQIHUlj4P9x4mQ2hC6y74fBJ3EBAtiGjuXIhC6clfn8yF19qGjQJj5g1ez2UVq-dyUuy8Td7_Gfa36ryefTRtPgnxoaRliOsOELLkHaDiX52orl/s1600/monsters_csg263_clash_of_the_titans.jpg

I haven’t seen the new one or its sequel, but it isn’t for not trying. My household efficiently destroys all visceral effects of CGI adventure movies with screaming babies and a wife who walks into the living room, sees a winged creature onscreen and says, “So, what’re we going to watch tonight?”

But I’m not disheartened. When I was a boy, I saw the original Clash of the Titans and its bold sense of romance, adventure, and myth sent me headlong into reading books on the subject.

That’s when I discovered that the movie, while still effective as an adventure film, only presents a set of myths told in the same fashion… forever. My thinking on this, right or wrong, was, well, that sucks. Say what you will about the recent Star Wars trilogy, but at least it tried to tell a new story, with lightsabers involved.

Essentially, I discovered that mythology would always be a series of remakes, rehashes, re-rees. Perseus is always going to chop off Medusa’s head and use it as a magic weapon, and her gorgonly power, to change things into stone, will never develop into something more.

Stagnant.

Myths, while beloved, are inert.

2) Mannequin

Pic: http://www.virtual-history.com/movie/photo/04/large/04109.jpg

Well sure, you can change myths into farce. I have no problem with that. Mannequin (1987) was a riff on the Pygmalion myth, but this alteration functions on the premise that situational changes will permit us to observe it with new eyes. In other words, let’s put a great big red clown nose on it and laugh! Huhuhuhuh.

Problem is, even if a farce is done with a Jefferson Starship soundtrack, afterward it’s all downhill and you get Mannequin 2: On the Move (1991). Much closer to a myth-reframing would be My Fair Lady (1964), but there you’ve taken out the magic elements and become symbolic, or more to the point: I paid to watch a marble statue come to life, not some prostitute to be born again as a gentlewoman!

3) Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief

Pic: http://www.movieposterdb.com/posters/09_11/2010/814255/l_814255_7461c9a5.jpg

So, keeping the previous 1980s Kim Cattrall vehicle in mind, let’s create something new but change very little about the myth elements. It will be different because we set the story in modern times with modern people as main characters. This reminds me of every time Cap’n Crunch changes the color of its corn rafts and suddenly we are supposed to believe it’s a completely new breakfast experience!

The Greek myths used in Percy Jackson are essentially the same, but now you have this modern paint applied to their surface. It’s fun and can be captivating even, but Medusa still has serpent hair and Neptune still carries a Trident. I’m not faulting the story for this dependence on recognized norms, by and by, but pointing out that it takes the original myths in little new direction. Mythology lovers enjoy it for the same reason Batman lovers enjoy reading What-If-Batman-Fought-Crime-During-the-Industrial-Revolution comic books. So, like I said, this is not a slight on stories like this, just an observation that no matter the color, Cap’n Crunch is Cap’n Crunch.

Unless you put lotus blossoms in it… then it’s effing AWESOME.

4) Jason and the Argonauts

Pic: http://s1.moviefanfare.com/uploads/2012/04/Jason-and-the-Argonauts-2.jpg

Jason and the Argonauts (or as I used to call it in my most mature adolescence, Jason and the Aw go fug yerself). This film is a treasure and I love it to bits. The Golden Fleece myth is also a great example of what I’m trying to prove here. On display we have here an ensemble adventure story; it’s the Avengers, it’s X-Men, it’s a group of mythological heroes on one boat with the Hulk—I mean Hercules. This is why Clash of the Titans and Percy Jackson aren’t particularly new approaches: even in ancient times while storytellers recited and sung these stories, they already reiterated established myths. It’s thrilling, yes, but reliant on the piling up of positively charged emotional baggage of past myths to make someone as boring as Jason look interesting.

Those attacking skeletons are badass though.

5) Hercules in New York (1970)

Pic: https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjVpu_ZdvpPnqLHTazU5_sW1q5tLY_cwY5Q9VcUcx1zemZEPnRsd0XD5XXu7mz6knEbNrhoSprH9oHHLCJXlqO8GDuPSMVOJsk4Agr4RrJMKrkZ6-lImcX48RQVi6lpGJTMtcFTC_QTdif/s1600/01-Arnie.jpg

Then, let’s also consider you can squeeze all the substance out of a myth and rely on any of its aspects in the most superficial way possible. Hercules = Strong. Arnold = Strong. Therefore, the syllogism gets us Mr. Universe running around New York in a toga smashing doofus criminals’ heads together.

In the end, stories from mythology ring true to us, no matter their usage. I suspect this is because they had so many trial runs; while those epic poems and songs folks loved the most were refined, the less successful tales inspired belching contests during their recitals, and were ultimately tossed. It’s tricky to redesign something that stands against the test of so much time. In my novel, I tried to leap over the drawn boundaries of one particular Greek myth. Whether it was effective, I’ll leave for others to decide, but damn, was it ever fun.

YOU CAN PICK UP A COPY OF BOTTLED ABYSS HERE