Roth-Steyr
“You never know which ideas will stick in your mind, let alone where they’ll go. Roth-Steyr began with an interest in the odd designs and names of early automatic pistols, and the decision to use one of them as a story title. What started out as an oddball short piece became a much longer and darker tale about how easily a familiar world can fall apart, how old convictions vanish or change, and why no one should want to live forever.
It’s also about my obsession with history, in particular the chaotic upheavals that plagued the first half of the twentieth century and that are waking up again. Another ‘long dark night of the European soul’ feels very close today.
So here’s the story of Valerie Varden. And her Roth-Steyr.”
You can buy Roth-Steyr directly from Black Shuck Books HERE
KR: Coffee?
KR: Could you tell me a little about yourself please?
SB: I’ve been writing for twenty-three years now. I grew up in Manchester, but now live on the Wirral with the most wonderful wife in the world, Cate Gardner, who’s also a brilliant writer. I’ve spent most of my adult life working low-paid jobs in order to support my writing habit. Apparently I’m expected to grow up at some point, but it hasn’t happened yet. I’ve published six novels so far (seven if you count the currently unavailable ebook serial Black Mountain): Tide Of Souls, The Faceless, The Feast Of All Souls, and the Black Road series (Hell’s Ditch, Devil’s Highway and Wolf’s Hill), which combine post-apocalyptic action thriller with supernatural horror. Plus two novellas four full-length story collections and two mini-ones. The final Black Road novel is in preparation and a new novella, Roth-Steyr, is out on Halloween.
KR: What do you like to do when not writing?
SB: Read, watch films, and spend time with people I care about. I used to be a lot more physically active, but some health issues have affected that. I’m hoping to put them behind me and get out of the house more: I love walking in the hills and the countryside, or along a beach.
KR: What is your favourite childhood book?
SB: I’d better warn you now that I can never pick a single favourite anything! My favourite thing growing up was books of short fiction, although I went for novels too – Dr Who adaptations (usually by the late great Terrance Dicks) or my grandpa’s Jack Higgins, Alastair Maclean and Douglas Reeman books. But my favourite book of his (which I still have) is a big hardback 1920s anthology called A Century Of Thrillers. It’s got Blackwood, Bierce, Poe and dozens more. (No James or Lovecraft, though!) I was very lucky growing up that we had a great public library nearby full of anthologies. Joan Aiken was another writer who rocked my childhood – her books of short stories contain some absolute gems, including The Hunchback Of Brock Green, the climax of which genuinely scared me when I read it and still packed a punch when I reread it thirty years later!
KR: What is your favourite album, and does music play any role in your writing?
SB: I love music, and I always have a soundtrack to write by. It’s usually a single album played over and over on repeat; occasionally I alternate a couple. At the moment, Ladytron by Ladytron is getting some heavy rotation; before that, it was Shriekback’s Why Anything? Why This? I’m also listening to Navigating By The Stars, a beautiful solo album from 2002 by New Model Army’s Justin Sullivan.
KR: Do you have a favourite horror movie/director?
SB: There are loads of great directors out there, but of current UK ones I have to mention Peter Strickland and Ben Wheatley, both of whom, although they’re not always making horror, bring a dark and skewed sensibility to all they do. Alice Lowe’s Prevenge was fantastic, and I’d love to see whatever she does next as a director. In fact, seeing Lowe’s name on anything is an instant guarantor of quality for me, be it as actor, writer or director. Matthew Holness’ is another filmmaker whose work I love: his feature Possum is a hugely disturbing work, and his shorter movies inhabit a similar ‘70s/’80s timewarp.
KR: What are you reading now?
SB: Mistletoe by Alison Littlewood, which is an excellent Christmas ghost story. I should probably have waited a couple of months to read it.
KR: What was the last great book you read?
SB: The novel that really sticks in my mind is Adam Nevill’s The Reddening, which I reread for the third time earlier this year. Nevill has a particular way of getting under a reader’s skin and into their head. At shorter length, I really loved three of Black Shuck’s Signature Novellas series – Rich Hawkins’ Black Star, Black Sun, Paul St John Mackintosh’s The Three Books and Andrew David Barker’s Dead Leaves. Of forthcoming releases, both Catriona Ward and C.J. Tudor have new novels due out in the near future, and I’m looking forward to both.
KR: E-Book, Paperback or Hardback?
SB: Depends on whether you’re asking me as a reader or as a writer! As a reader, I love paperbacks and e-books equally – what’s important is that you read, and if I’m going on holiday, it’s a lot easier to transport my reading material by Kindle. That said, I also love books as physical artefacts. The cover art, the smell of the pages. As a writer, it matters to be able to see my work in a concrete, physical form. I rarely buy hardbacks, unless it’s a book I literally cannot wait to read – that’s partly about price and partly because if I’m reading a book I have to tote the ruddy thing around for the duration. But as a writer, I do take an extra bit of pride in the hardback editions of my work. The Horrific Tales hardback of And Cannot Come Again is a real thing of beauty.
KR: Who were the authors that inspired you to write?
SB: There are so many… Terrance Dicks, who wrote so many of the original Dr Who novelisations, plus authors like Ray Bradbury, Richard Matheson, Dorothy K. Haynes, R. Chetwynd-Hayes, Joseph Payne Brennan, Nigel Kneale… as I said, most of the authors who first rocked my world were short story writers, so there are far too many to list here. Ramsey Campbell’s children’s anthology The Gruesome Book was a formative read (although I didn’t read much of his fiction till many years later), along with Richard Davis’ Space and Spectre anthologies, some of whose contributors such as Tim Stout and Julia Birley – not to mention Tony Richards, who’s still going strong today! – deserve to be a lot better known.
KR: Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
SB: I used to plot in advance – Devil’s Highway had an outline over 100 pages and 30,000 words long, because it revolved around a massive battle sequence seen from multiple viewpoints – but over the last year or two I’ve increasingly become a pantser, diving in with only a very the haziest idea of what’s going on and letting the story take shape from the material and the characters. I’ll be able to work out what happens over the next chapter or two at first, then slowly a structure will start to take shape. The current project started from nothing more than its opening scene: I took a break from it over the past week or so to rough out the beginning of what I hope will be the next book, and all I had with that was the title! Inevitably there are a few false starts, back-trackings and days when I really don’t know what’s going on or if it will work, but I’m finding it a much more exciting and rewarding way to work.
KR: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
SB: Enough to get excited about the topic, and to be able to wing it. If you get too bogged down in research, you can end up hobbling the imaginative aspects of your work: you’re not writing an instruction manual. The point is to tell a story that rings true on an emotional level. At the same time, you don’t want to make a complete arse of yourself, not least because a really glaring error can snap the reader out of the story. So there’ll often be a lot of research during or after the first draft – I’ll make notes as I go and fix them as and when possible – to change, delete or work around any factual errors. Wherever possible, I will amend and rewrite this stuff while I’m working on the first draft.
KR: How would you describe your writing style?
SB: I know what I want to achieve, which is a clear, straightforward storytelling voice that immediately draws the reader in, but that also has the vividness and depth of poetry. Which sounds pretentious, I know, but there you go. Sometimes I think I’ve achieved it and other times I think I’m terrible. That goes with being a writer and all you can do is to keep showing up at the laptop and plugging away. Readers and posterity (if there is one) will have to decide how well I succeeded.
KR: Describe your usual writing day?
SB: It varies, but most days I get up bright and early (5 – 5.30 am), make a large pot of tea and work till I’ve written at least 1000 words on the current work in progress. On a good day that’s an hour’s work. On a bad day, everything grinds to a halt and becomes like pulling teeth, which usually means I’ve gone wrong somewhere and need to backtrack and probably delete some bits. Or it can mean I need to switch point of view, or give some thought to a supporting character who’s now become important to the story, or work out the next chapter or two. Normally I’ll try to work on the notes I’ve put on the story, or work on redrafting an earlier manuscript, but I’ve recently returned to work after a long absence, I’m often coming home wiped out as I readjust, so at the moment it’s just the 1000 words a day – plus the odd fun thing like this!
KR: Do you have a favourite story/short that you’ve written (published or not)?
SB: My favourite is usually the one I’ve just written, am working on or intend to write next! But of all I’ve published, I’m particularly proud of Angels Of The Silences, which was recently reprinted in And Cannot Come Again. It’s a much gentler piece than a lot of things I normally write. Which isn’t to see it doesn’t get pretty dark in places.
KR: Do you read your book reviews?
SB: Yes. I try not to believe any of them – the good ones go to my head and the bad ones make me miserable – but I usually fail!
KR: How do you think you’ve developed as an author?
SB: I hope I’ve got better. I think I’ve got better at trusting to my own instincts as a writer, and at finding and sticking to the direction I need to go in, even if it seems completely lacking in common sense.
KR: What is the best piece of advice you’ve received regarding your writing?
SB: To write every day, whether I feel like it or not. That, and never to give up.
KR: What scares you?
SB: Reality.
KR: Can you tell me about your latest release please?
SB: Roth-Steyr will be released on Halloween by Black Shuck Books as part of their Signature Novellas series, and it’s a novella about Valerie Varden, who works in the mortuary of an inner-city hospital and lives with her girlfriend. She looks like an ordinary enough woman, but she isn’t. A hundred years ago, as the First World War ended and the Empire she’d grown up in fell apart, Valerie became immortal. She has a dark and violent past she’s still trying to atone for, but now it’s catching up with her: her ex-colleagues have started to turn up dead, murdered with an antique pistol called a Roth-Steyr. To survive, Valerie will have to return to the violence of her past, but to do so may cost her everything she has.
I should probably add that this is not in any way a vampire story, because it probably sounds like one from that description. It’s a story about how things you take for granted, even the world you live in, can fall apart around you in moments. And why no-one should want to live forever.
KR: What are you working on now?
SB: A horror novel set in the Peak District of Derbyshire. The working title is Tatterskin.
KR: You find yourself on a desert island, which three people would you wish to be deserted with you and why?
You can choose…
a) One fictional character from your writing.
SB: Gevaudan Shoal from the Black Road novels. Intelligent, witty, cultured and indestructible, and if anyone could work out how to make an island a perfectly nice place to live, it’d be him. (Let’s face it, the state the world’s in, having to live on an island away from most of the human race would be more of an opportunity than a hardship…)
b) One fictional character from any other book.
SB: This is a tricky one, as so many of the books I most enjoy are full of characters you wouldn’t want to be marooned with anywhere, but I think I’ll say Ulli, a recurring character in a number of short stories by the late Helen Dunmore. She’s a quiet, intelligent woman who quietly goes her own way in life, and I’d like to meet her again. Also, the first story in which she appears is called Love Of Fat Men. Which given that I might be stuck on the island for a while, is possibly good news. Although nothing would make up for being separated from my wife. Cate is quite literally my other half, and I wouldn’t feel whole without her.
c) One real-life person that is not a family member or friend.
SB: I’m tempted to say Greta Thunberg, because I’m in awe of her courage and determination, but we need her out in the wider world. So I’ll say Jeremy Corbyn – a genuinely decent man who I think will one day be recognised as the best Prime Minister we never had. God knows the man deserves a holiday. (He’d certainly do a better job than the current incumbent at the very least, although that isn’t exactly a high bar…)
KR: Thank you very much Simon
Simon Bestwick
Simon Bestwick was born in Wolverhampton, bred in Manchester, and now lives on the Wirral while pining for Wales. He is the author of six novels, four full-length short story collections and has been four times shortlisted for the British Fantasy Award. He is married to long-suffering fellow author Cate Gardner, his latest book is the short story collection And Cannot Come Again, and his new novella, Roth-Steyr, will be out in October from Black Shuck Books.
Twitter: @GevaudanShoal
Author website: www.simon-bestwick.com
Roth-Steyr/Black Shuck Books: Roth-Steyr
And Cannot Come Again: Horrific Tales
Roth-Steyr
“You never know which ideas will stick in your mind, let alone where they’ll go. Roth-Steyr began with an interest in the odd designs and names of early automatic pistols, and the decision to use one of them as a story title. What started out as an oddball short piece became a much longer and darker tale about how easily a familiar world can fall apart, how old convictions vanish or change, and why no one should want to live forever.
It’s also about my obsession with history, in particular the chaotic upheavals that plagued the first half of the twentieth century and that are waking up again. Another ‘long dark night of the European soul’ feels very close today.
So here’s the story of Valerie Varden. And her Roth-Steyr.”
You can buy Roth-Steyr directly from Black Shuck Books HERE
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