Black Static

Simon Bestwick emerged in the late nineties, one of many writers who cut their creative teeth in the numerous small press magazines that flourished at that time, publications with evocative names like Sackcloth & Ashes and Nasty Piece of Work. As well as writing, he co-edited Unreal Dreams with Richard Bennett, and flew solo with the annual Oktobyr.

A Hazy Shade of Winter, a collection of Simon's short stories, was released by the much respected Ash Tree Press in 2004. June 2009 saw the publication of a second collection, Pictures of the Dark (Gray Friar Press) and a mass market novel, Tide of Souls from Abaddon Books, the latest in their ongoing zombie series, Tomes of the Dead.

The Narrows appeared in We Fade to Grey, a collection of five novellas edited by Gary McMahon and published by Pendragon Press. It was picked up by Ellen Datlow for her Year's Best anthology and, along with another We Fade to Grey story, Heads by Gary McMahon, is short listed for the British Fantasy Award for Best Novella.

PT: What can you tell us about the ideas behind The Narrows? How did the story come to you?

SB: The title had been in my notebooks for a while. Then there was the setting; the underground canal system at Worsley, Lancashire. Also, I wanted to catch the feeling Ligotti's best work creates of reality as a shifting nightmare. And, finally, Gary McMahon's request for a novella-length story that was dark, emotionally charged and genuinely frightening. All these factors came together and threw out the storyline for The Narrows.

PT: The Narrows is a very grim, bleak, depressing piece. Would you regard yourself as a miserablist? How much of the story reflects your own emotional weather? Do you find writing something like this cathartic, or does it take an emotional toll?

SB: I wouldn't class myself as one, but I do admire and am influenced by a lot of the miserablist writers - Nick Royle, Conrad Williams and, in particular, Joel Lane.

Writing's a way of earthing various fears and anxieties - I don't think it's any accident that we're seeing a large amount of fiction with apocalyptic themes right now. There are some very grim possibilities up ahead. In fiction, you can look those fears squarely in the face and allow yourself to explore the worst-case scenarios, right through to the bitter end, which I was determined to do with The Narrows. So there was a very conscious element of stripping away any form of succour or comfort, and focusing on the bleakest possible outcome.

I don't see myself as a pessimist, although that might be hard to believe on the evidence of The Narrows! But I can see, for want of a better word, trajectories - the direction things are going in, and where they'll take us if they go unchecked. They often don't go unchecked, though. Our worst instincts win out a lot of the time, but not always. A case in point - the world situation in 2006, when The Narrows was written, was a very different one from today's. No-one could have predicted that two years later, the US electorate would reject candidates who were preaching the old gospel and bring in a president who's certainly far more left-leaning than any in recent memory. Also, I get far more sense of a will to resist among people, so things like that give me some guarded - very guarded - optimism.

I trained as an actor, so character is very important for me, as is a sense of emotional realism, trying to get each scene to 'ring true'. In a way, a lot of stories are a kind of performance, almost like an improvisation, where I literally 'act out' things I fear, or hope. This can be gruelling - for one novella I had to immerse myself in material on World War One, and the The School House meant revisiting some of the most painful episodes from my adolescence. The process can be painful, but ultimately it's cathartic.

PT: What do you regard as the advantages of writing at novella length, as opposed to both the short story and the novel?

SB: The best of both worlds, basically! You retain the focus and intensity of a short piece - no room for padding, subplots, comic relief or longueurs - but with something of the extra elbow-room a novel gives you for character development and added depth. It's the length I love working at the most - unfortunately not the easiest to place. And, of course, if you want to reach a wider audience, you need to be working at novel-length.

PT: How do you feel about dystopian fiction? Does it serve any purpose other than to make the reader feel depressed? What would you hope to achieve with The Narrows?

SB: Like I said above, it's about extrapolating trends - which speculative fiction, by its nature, has always done. Its purpose, if it has one, is cautionary - whether black satire or stark warning. As to wanting to 'achieve' anything with The Narrows - it's very rare for me to write anything these days with any kind of didactic message to it. The most important thing with a story for me is that it has some lasting effect on the reader. What that effect is, is beyond the author's control - it is, basically, a shock to the system. If the reader ends up looking at the world around them differently - hopefully with a positive result - then I've done my job.

PT: What was the very first thing you did when you learned that Ellen Datlow had picked up The Narrows for her Year's Best? And who was the first person you told?

SB: Jumped around and shouted! I can't actually remember who the first person I told was - probably the first person I spoke to that day, followed by everyone else. Obviously, there are some people who you particularly want to tell news like that: close friends, family - the people who'll understand why you're so happy about it!

PT: Tell us a bit about your writing process. Do you have a routine? How many drafts do you get through? Do you listen to music while writing or prefer silence?

SB: Shorter pieces I try to write in one sitting if I can; with longer projects I aim for 2500 words a day. Some pieces get written longhand - The Narrows was - while with others I go straight to the keyboard. Generally, the words come fairly easily as long as you're staying true to the characters and the story. If the work becomes a grind, it usually means I've gone astray somewhere, so I'll go back to find where things went off-track, rework it till it's right, and carry on. The most important thing is to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth as I see it in this story. This way the first draft has hopefully got 90-95% of all the material it needs. The second draft is about a) putting in or correcting the missing material and then b) shaving about 10% off the word count until there's nothing superfluous and the prose flows smoothly. I call this the second draft, but a section or chapter can be reworked multiple times until it's right. Reading through the MS aloud is one of the best ways to weed out problems. There's usually a last flick through for a general health-check, then off it goes.

Structure is vitally important. In shorter work I can usually work it out as I go; while novels tend to require some sort of outline, a blueprint. With novellas, it can be either method, depending on the story.

Usually - but not invariably - I prefer music when I work. I'll often play the same album over and over again when writing, or any one of a selection with a novel. The Narrows was written to the non-stop accompaniment of P J Harvey's Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea.

PT: Which writers have influenced you the most, and how?

SB: One of the earliest was Richard Matheson- I bought Shock 3 at a school jumble sale aged 11 and was blown away. Stephen King came along later, of course, followed by older writers like Machen, Blackwood, Lovecraft, James and Hodgson. Classic ghost stories rely on subtlety, nuance, careful structure and precise use of language more than any other kind. Other writers include Alan Garner - I'm in awe of his ability to pare down language and description till what remains is both stripped-down and yet poetic - Joe Lansdale, Joel Lane, Trevanian and Simon Louvish.

PT: You used to edit an annual print-zine, Oktobyr. Do you think the experience of reading and editing other people's work has helped you improve your own writing?

SB: To be honest, I don't think I was a very good editor; I was barely starting out myself as a writer. But I don't think I learned much about writing from the experience. If I did it now it might be another story.

PT: You have a novel out from Abaddon, Tide of Souls, and a new collection from Gray Friar Press, Pictures of the Dark. So what can we expect to see from you next?

SB: Nothing's set in stone as yet! I'd love to write something else for Abaddon, because they've been great to deal with. Angry Robot have OK'd me to submit something to them, so I'm working on a new novel called The Song Of The Sibyl. In the meantime, there'll be a new story, The Suicide Chairs, coming out in Michael Kelly's anthology Apparitions later this year.