Craig Wallwork is the author of the novels, Bad People, and The Sound of Loneliness, as well as the short story collections, Quintessence of Dust, and Gory Hole. His stories have been nominated three times for the Pushcart Prize, many of which feature in various anthologies and magazines both in the U.K. and U.S. He currently lives in England.
Bad People
THREE MISSING CHILDREN. Over the past three years, the quiet Yorkshire village of Stormer Hill has lost three of its children. No bodies were ever discovered. No evidence found. No witnesses.
THE WRITER. Struggling to find inspiration for his new novel, celebrated crime author, and ex-police officer, Alex Palmer, believes the story of the missing children could end his writer’s block, but is he prepared for the story that’s about to develop?
THE DETECTIVE. Tom Nolan, a seasoned detective and loner involved in finding each missing child. Nolan is tasked with chaperoning Palmer and walking through each case. But as both men revisit the past, and dig deeper, neither are prepared for the chilling discovery to why the children were taken.
THE BRETHREN. A secret cult. Two men, and a series of brutal and unimaginable murders spanning over seven years with one intention; to show the world that death can be justified if it’s for a greater good.
KR: Coffee?
KR: Could you tell me a little about yourself please?
I’m left of field. Always have been. At the age of six I became obsessed with Dracula (Hammer House version), and often stole crucifixes from my Nan’s house who was a staunch catholic so I could impersonate Van Helsing. That same year I watched Popeye, ate spinach and attempted to push the neighbour’s house further away because they made too much noise. I practised telekinesis, astral project, resurrection of dead insects, palmistry for dogs, and more worryingly, became fascinated by Michael Jackson, all before my teens. As a young man, I lived with strippers, dabbled with hedonism, failed as a film maker and artist before finally settling into writing. Most of my short stories are based on fact. This will be interesting to anyone who has read the collection, Quintessence of Dust that includes the story, Anal Twine.
KR: What do you like to do when not writing?
Rebuke myself for talking about my past. And when I’m not doing that, attempt to be the best father and husband I can. If I’m not doing that, sleep.
KR: What is your favourite childhood book?
I didn’t read many books as a child. I was a comic boy: 2000 AD, Beano, Dandy, X-Men, that kind of thing. I pestered my parents to buy me a desk and an artist board so I could pretend being an illustrator. I’d sit for hours copying Judge Dredd and Eagle, then attempting to create my own characters. I once began a comic featuring a time-travelling chimpanzee who went back to Nazi Germany to kill Hitler. The idea was people adore chimps, so no one would see it as a threat, including Adolf. I got about three pages done before retiring it to the waste paper basket.
KR: What is your favourite album, and does music play any role in your writing?
No More Shall We Part, by Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds. That was the first album that made me realise how impactive writing can truly be in the short form. Cave, along with Tom Waits, are for me true bastions of the narrative song. I remember hearing Cave’s, Darker With the Day, Fifteen Feet of Pure White Snow, and God is in the House and being floored by how visual and incredible his word play. That album made me want to stop listening and go write something. To this day Cave’s music has become the soundtrack to my writing. My most recent book, Bad People, was penned under the influence of White Lunar, Cave’s collaboration with long term Bad Seed member Warren Ellis. I’m awaiting the verdict from the readers whether that was a good move or not.
KR: Do you have a favourite horror movie/director?
As a child it used to be Dawn of the Dead (original). But more recently I fell back in love with The Exorcist. When it was first released I remember my father telling me he had to sleep with the lights on. He used to watch movies like, Xtro, The Exterminator and Zombie Apocalypse, so I figured it must be pretty extreme. I mean, they banned [The Exorcist] in the U.K. for years. Fast forward to 1989. A reissued print is showing it at a local cinema in my hometown. I took my then girlfriend and waited with much anticipation for my dreams to be forever scarred. Rawhead Rex, The Thing, Freddy Kruger, Prince of Darkness and various others, were regular viewing for me and my friends at that time. The landscape of horror had changed, and as such, The Exorcist turned out to be a real disappointment. The only scene that disturbed me was when Regan had a needle injected into her neck. It was about ten years later that I began to see the “story”. Having revisited the movie over a dozen times since, read the book about three times, watched documentaries, and interviews with author William Peter Blatty, and poured over Mark Kermode’s The Exorcist book, a greater appreciation of the underlying themes of faith and redemption came clear. Now, The Exorcist is a near perfect movie in my eyes, and strangely feels less like horror and more a study on theology, and a personal voyage for the author in reclaiming his faith in God.
KR: What are you reading now?
The Amulet by Michael McDowell. Blackwater was my first McDowell book. I began that book with no preconceived idea of what to expect. I didn’t even know McDowell had been dead for nearly twenty years, and that he had, in the late 1980s, penned the first draft of the Beetlejuice screenplay, which, through subsequent research, was a lot darker than the movie we know today. I’ve read a lot of ghost stories and I can say that what McDowell does in a couple of pages can take most authors fifty. I’ve since read Gilded Needles, The Elementals and Cold Moon Over Babylon, and I can say he is one of the best horror writers I’ve ever read.
KR: What was the last great book you read?
The Book of X by Sarah Rose Etter. It tells the story of Cassie, a girl born with a hereditary disorder where her stomach is wrapped into a knot. By following her life we are plunged into a world where meat is harvested from quarries, male prostitutes can be amputated if you can’t afford the cost, and jealously forms in the body as granite. If Bridget Jones was written by William Burroughs, this would it. Dark, hypnotic, surreal, heart-breaking, honest and sublime.
KR: E-Book, Paperback or Hardback?
E-books for holiday. Paperbacks to read in bed. Hardbacks for treasuring.
KR: Who were the authors that inspired you to write?
Too many. My earliest recollection was Harper Lee. I know, she’s hardly known for writing horror, but bear with me. I grew up in Manchester, England, a far cry from Maycomb, Alabama. But the language and voice of Scout captivated me. Lee set the bar for writing. Then I read Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk. His writing was completely different, more stripped back, conversational. To put it simply, Lee made me want to write, but it was Palahniuk that gave me the courage to try. I then began re-reading Stephen King and James Herbert to understand the way horror should be written. It was always a genre I loved so I wanted to know the formula. I went further back to Shirley Jackson, Robert Bloch, Bram Stoker and Henry James. Now I flirt between more contemporary horror authors like, Paul Tremblay, Stephen Graham Jones, Grady Hendrix, Josh Malerman, and Sarah Read to name just a few. All these people inspire me to write, and teach me that the only limitation a writer has is their imagination.
KR: Do you work to an outline or plot or do you prefer to just see where an idea takes you?
Stephen King used to go on about his friend, John Updike, who has to write the very last line of his book before he begins. King was the opposite, more organic. I’m firmly in the King camp on that one. I’ll excavate an idea, dust it off and let it rest for a while. If I keep going back to that idea, then I know there’s something in it. That’s when I start writing. I’ll try and have an end in mind, but it rarely goes the way I assumed it would. For me, this is a more exciting way of writing, less constricting and natural.
KR: What kind of research do you do, and how long do you spend researching before beginning a book?
I research a lot! Anyone who had read my short stories may not think that, but it’s true. I mentioned Anal Twine before, and while it sounds puerile based on the title, I had to understand how the brain works and where long and short term memory is stored. Same with Bad People; there’s a lot of police policies and such like throughout that book. It’s as near to a missing person procedure as you can get without boring the reader. Without research the reader doesn’t have confidence, and if they don’t have confidence, they won’t hold your hand along that long journey.
KR: How would you describe your writing style?
It’s been described by others as Bizzaro with heart, adventurous and comical, and joyfully anarchic. William Gay, Thomas Bernard, Etgar Keret and Gabriel García Márquez are comparisons made toward its style. Personally, I will always see it as literary, but not purple.
KR: Describe your usual writing day?
Wake up, tidy the house (can’t write in a dirty room), make coffee and listen to that voice in my head. Some days I hear it so clearly I struggle to keep up transcribing the words. Other times, it’s mute or distant. I always write something, even on a bad day. But I’ve been known to spend hours re-writing sentences over and over. Was it Oscar Wilde who said they spent the morning putting in a comma, and the rest of the afternoon removing it? Well, some days it’s like that.
KR: Do you have a favourite story/short that you’ve written (published or not)?
I always liked, Night Holds a Scythe, which is about a fatal sleeping disorder that’s taken over the world, meaning that anyone who falls asleep will die. The story is told through the eyes of a father who has stolen a small passenger plane and is attempting to chase the sun around the globe to keep his three-year-old daughter awake. It’s one of those high concept stories, but the reason it’s dear to my heart is because the girl was based on my daughter at the time. It’s featured in my short story collection, Quintessence of Dust.
KR: Do you read your book reviews?
Yes. Some get me through heavy bouts of worthlessness. Even the bad ones push me to be better. Reviews are gifts. They should be accepted with gratitude and treated with admiration. You also have to remember you can’t please everyone.
KR: How do you think you’ve developed as an author?
In 2012/13 I had a good run of it; four books out and a lot of shorts being accepted in anthologies and magazines. Then I went away to write a new novel. When it was finished, I truly thought it was my best work. No one else did. I mean, literally no one wanted to read it, and some of these people were peers and friends. Radio silence is the worst of all critiques. Terrible to the mind and soul. So I wrote another book as a distraction, but just like the last one, I was struggling to find it a home. All those rejections taught me that no matter how invested you are in the words you write, or how wonderful you think they are, there is always room to improve. So, I spent five years learning to write again. I’m coming out the other end with a greater understanding of the process, and that sometimes you need to hold on less tightly, enjoy the process, and trust your heart.
KR: What is the best piece of advice you’ve received regarding your writing?
Don’t switch perspective. For a long time most of my shorts or novels were first-person narrative. But when I began writing in the third, people kept saying to me, watch the perspective. I was thinking, it’s in the third person, when did it change? But what they meant was, I was writing in the limited third person, therefore all thoughts and known feelings stay with the main character of that chapter. I was delving into the minds of secondary characters within the same scene! That’s a real literary faux pas. Once I knew that rule, it changed my writing for the better.
KR: What scares you?
Being normal.
KR: Can you tell me about your latest release please?
Bad People. It’s a dark thriller with elements of horror about a small rural village in England where three children have gone missing, and what is assumed to be a series of abductions proves to be something more gruesome and horrific. It was inspired by books like, The Disappearance at Devil’s Rock, Psycho and David Fincher’s Se7en. It’s certainly not James Paterson or Lee Child. So if you’re after a plot-driven page-turner, you may be disappointed. What you will get though is a police procedural drama that takes you into the minds of some very sick and twisted people.
KR: What are you working on now?
I’m toying between two new books. Bad People forms part of a series featuring the detective Tom Nolan, so I’m playing around with a follow-up. The other book is more a memoir, but not so self-indulgent. It’s loosely based on things I did as a younger man, and people I know or knew. But there is a story in there as well. That said, tomorrow I may wake up and decide to write about that time travelling monkey who goes back to World War II and kills Hitler. Who knows.
KR: You find yourself on a desert island, which three people would you wish to be deserted with you and why?
That Nazi killing chimp, because let’s face it, who better to have on an island than someone who can climb trees for food, and tear a pirate a new a-hole? Second choice would be Sherlock Holmes. While we’re waiting for him to figure out how to get us off the island, Holmes can regale me with previous cases he’s worked on. Finally, Tom Hanks. He survived once, he can help me, the chimp and Holmes survive too.
KR: Thank you very much Craig.
Craig Wallwork
You can find out more about Craig via his official website www.craigwallwork.com
Bad People
THREE MISSING CHILDREN. Over the past three years, the quiet Yorkshire village of Stormer Hill has lost three of its children. No bodies were ever discovered. No evidence found. No witnesses.
THE WRITER. Struggling to find inspiration for his new novel, celebrated crime author, and ex-police officer, Alex Palmer, believes the story of the missing children could end his writer’s block, but is he prepared for the story that’s about to develop?
THE DETECTIVE. Tom Nolan, a seasoned detective and loner involved in finding each missing child. Nolan is tasked with chaperoning Palmer and walking through each case. But as both men revisit the past, and dig deeper, neither are prepared for the chilling discovery to why the children were taken.
THE BRETHREN. A secret cult. Two men, and a series of brutal and unimaginable murders spanning over seven years with one intention; to show the world that death can be justified if it’s for a greater good.
You can buy Bad People from Amazon UK & Amazon US
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