Just as a reminder that Spare Parts is now available as an eBook here's an interview with me and 2000AD scribe Alec Worley from when the original paperback version came out.
ALEC WORLEY: Are there any background details about
yourself that you want to fill the readers in on?
STUART YOUNG: You mean
apart from the fact that I’m incredibly witty and handsome? Oh -- you only want
honest answers. Fair enough.
I’ve
had over fifty stories published in various books and magazines including Roadworks, Darkness Rising, Kimota, and Nasty
Piece of Work. My monthly comics column, Words and Pictures, runs at www.thealienonline.net I work in a mental health community home.
And I live in Essex which is the finest county in the whole of England. Oh
yeah, honest answers only. Sorry.
AW: You had a story published in The Mammoth Book of
Future Cops. How did it feel to appear in a mass market paperback?
SY: I was
convinced the whole thing was a huge mistake, that I’d somehow been sent
someone else’s acceptance letter. Took seeing the book in Borders and
Waterstones to convince me otherwise. But somehow what gave me the biggest buzz
was when I unexpectedly stumbled across a copy whilst browsing in my local
library. Total shock. But in a good way.
AW:
How did your collection of horror stories, Spare
Parts, come about?
SY: That was
all part of a carefully orchestrated pitching campaign. Basically I waited
until John B. Ford was drunk and then said, “I’ve got some stories to show
you.” By the time he’d sobered up it was too late, he’d already accepted them.
Rainfall Books didn’t have any submission
guidelines so I ended up giving him far too many stories and he whittled it
down to his favourites. These turned out to be all the stories centring around
death and doomed love. This despite the fact that John has always struck me as
a very cheery person whenever I’ve met him. Just goes to show what a two-faced,
duplicitous wretch he really is.
Um,
John isn’t going to get to read this is he?
AW:
You have an eBook of fantasy stories coming out in 2004 called Shards of Dreams. Why
did you choose to branch out into fantasy instead of doing more horror?
SY: Well, when I
saw that Double Dragon published both fantasy and horror I was spoilt for
choice because I had enough stories to fill a collection in either genre. But
as people aren’t that aware of my fantasy stuff and Spare Parts was already full of horror stories I thought it would
be nice to showcase my fantasy work.
Besides,
some of the stories in Shards of Dreams
are quite dark. People getting broken, physically and mentally. Although others are comedies. It’s a bit of
a mix.
AW:
Does working at a mental home help in writing tales of horror and madness?
SY: Not too
often. I don’t base stories on things in the clients’ casenotes or anything.
Partly out of client confidentiality, partly because it’s not as though I work
in a challenging behaviour unit where the staff constantly deal with
knife-wielding psychopaths and the like. The home where I work is very settled
and the clients are really nice people.
AW:
So what sort of research do you do then?
SY: It depends.
Sometimes I fake it, just blag my way through a story. Other times I force
myself to actually do a bit of work. For example, the stories in Spare Parts all had varying degrees of
research to them.
‘Face
at the Window’ started off as a 500 word writing exercise so initially I didn’t
bother doing any research into Alzheimer’s but once it morphed into something
that might be worth submitting I got a book out of my local library and jotted
down some notes just to make it sound like I knew what I was talking about.
With
‘Swamp ‘Gator Blues’ I was kind of stuck for research. This was in the mid-90s,
before I got the Internet, so I had real trouble finding stuff that could help
me out. The original inspiration was Southern
Comfort but that was set in the 70s and I needed something more
contemporary. So I read possibly the most boring travel book ever written so I
could glean all the information it had on Louisiana. And I read novels by James
Lee Burke and Daniel Woodrell because they had bayou settings and Cajun heroes.
I even watched Jean Claude Van Damme’s Hard
Target for the bayou scenes. *shudders at the memory* Now THAT’s devotion
above and beyond the call of duty.
Other
times the research is already done and I’m just waiting for a story to use it
in. With ‘Spirits of and Darkness and Light’ I already knew a fair bit about
WWI fighter pilots because I used to be a big Biggles fan. I also liked the
Martin Falconer books by John Harris. (The story actually contains a few nods
to both these series.) Consequently as a kid I read up quite a bit on fighter
pilots, mainly from WWI and WWII, so years later when I wrote this story I only
needed to check the odd fact here and there.
‘Spare
Parts’ was inspired by an experiment I read about in New Scientist. The trick with the table is genuine although
obviously I play around with the possibilities for the sake of the story.
‘Boxes’
came about from a combination of my childhood obsession with Sherlock Holmes
stories and my more recent interest in the workings of the human mind; in this
case memory and perception. Books like Rita Carter’s Mapping the Mind were a great help.
‘Midnight
in a Perfect World’ probably looks like the story with the least research in
the collection but the concept only occurred to me after I went through a phase
of reading popular science books, trying to learn about quantum physics and the
structure of Time. But it comes across more as inspiration than research -- I
don’t actually talk about superpositions and overlapping timelines. I just use
metaphors for them within the story.
AW:
Do you have a particular method you follow when you write?
SY: I sacrifice a
small child to the gods of the creative muse. Usually works out at three
stories per sacrifice.
No,
normally I try to get the writing done either as soon as I get up or as soon as
I get back from work depending on what shift I’m working. My notes are normally
written up in the form of a mindmap with a beat by beat plot outline on the
back of the sheet. But sometimes I just improvise, depending on what mood I’m
in. Most of my writing is done at my computer, which I know you find totally
freakish, but I normally only write longhand if the PC is busted or my eyes are
tired from staring at the screen for too long.
I
tend to procrastinate like crazy when I’m supposed to write. Suddenly I want to
read my email, my snail mail, my story notes, the labels on tin cans; anything
I can think of to stop myself writing. But usually I’m okay once I convince
myself to actually sit down and start writing.
But
I keep a small child on standby just in case.
AW:
Do you have a specific aim in mind when you sit down to write a story?
SY: As far as I’m
concerned the most important thing is to entertain the reader. If they’re not
enjoying the story then why the hell should they read it? But there’s different
ways of entertaining people. Some people like to laugh, some people like to
cry, some people like to be frightened. So I try to cover different things --
comedy, tragedy, romance, adventure, horror etc -- in different stories. And
I’m always pleased when I can mix a few of these different approaches into the same story. It gives the tale that
little bit of texture, something for the reader to chew on. After all, life isn’t
stuck in only one emotional state so I don’t see why stories should be.
And
if I can write something that makes the reader think then that’s an added
bonus.
AW:
Are there any major Influences on your writing style?
SY: I’m always
discovering new influences or rediscovering old ones. For instance I recently started reading John Connolly’s novels
and I think they’re great. They’ve helped crystallise my thinking in terms of
some the stuff I was already doing in my writing whilst simultaneously giving me
ideas about new things to try.
Other
prose influences include James Ellroy, Joe R. Lansdale, Greg Egan, Douglas
Adams, Stephen Hunter, Alfred Bester, Andrew Vachss, Robert Bloch, and Michael
Moorcock. Basically writers who can keep a story moving with clear, uncluttered
prose. And who have either a sense of humour or a gripping story to tell.
Preferably both.
I’ve
learnt a lot from various comic book authors especially people like Neil
Gaiman, Frank Miller, Garth Ennis, Chris Claremont, Warren Ellis, Grant
Morrison, and Brian Michael Bendis. And then there’s Alan Moore who’s such a
complex writer; I’ve been reading his stuff since I was 15 but it’s only in the
last few years that I’ve figured out how to apply his techniques to my own
writing. I had to read a lot of stuff by Gaiman and Morrison, who were both
heavily influenced by Moore, and pick out various tricks that they employed and
then use that as a bridge to help me understand the mechanics of Moore’s
writing.
In
films you’ve got Die Hard, El Dorado, Reservoir Dogs, Pulp Fiction,
Terminator 1 and 2, Aliens, The Long Kiss Goodnight, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
Films are a little like comics in that I can quite happily rewatch the story
several times. I’ll pick up stuff about
dialogue and plot structure just by osmosis. And then when I actually start
paying attention it’s, “Wow! So that’s how the writer gets that effect at that
point in the story!” One of the best films I know for learning story structure
is A Bug’s Life, the plot unfolds
with clockwork precision. Plus it’s laugh out loud funny. There’s probably
loads more, Hitchcock for a start, but like I say a lot of it comes through by
osmosis so it doesn’t always register on a conscious level.
Then
from TV Only Fools and Horses and Porridge. They know how to juxtapose
humour and poignancy brilliantly, luring you into a sad story and then hitting
you with a gag that makes you split your sides. Or they do the reverse, firing
off jokes in all directions and then suddenly poleaxing you with something so
sad that you can’t help but get a lump in your throat. As for Buffy, Angel, and Smallville --
I know some people hate these sort of programmes but I love ‘em. And The Simpsons and Futurama have a wonderful madcap energy, there’s always something
happening -- I’ve tried to recreate that effect in some of my more humorous
stories but I’m not in the same league.
AW: You’ve been praised for your realistic
characterisation. Would you say that is the most important aspect of your
stories?
SY:
I don’t know if it’s the most
important aspect but it’s definitely high up on the list. If the reader’s going
to spend the entire story reading about a character then they need something
about that character with which they can sympathise, or at least empathise. But
ideally plot and dialogue should be just as strong as characterisation. Each
element affects the others e.g. if you decide the protagonist of a story is
incredibly brave then the plot and dialogue are probably going to be vastly
different than if they’re a total coward.
AW: You play around with typography and fonts in some of
your stories. What inspired this particular trait?
SY:
Um, I can point towards certain influences
but I’m a little hazy on exactly when I came across them, or in what order.
Some of it came from -- I don’t know if this is the correct term -- shape
poems. You know, where the words are laid out across the page to take on the
shape of the subject of the poem.
But
a lot of it came from comic book style lettering where sound effects are drawn
in such a way to suggest volume and movement. For example the sound effect for
a car might be VRROOMMM to suggest
speed, acceleration, volume, and the direction the car is travelling in. Or
different characters might have different fonts for their dialogue to suggest
varying tones or accents.
Also,
Michael Moorcock and Alfred Bester used various typographical effects. And the
effect I use in ‘Boxes’ is an idea that I nicked from a Nicholas Royle story,
although the way it works within the context of his story and mine is totally
different.
I’m
trying not to overuse the typography. It’s always tempting to show off with it,
do it just for the sake of it. But I don’t want to be known as “that writer who
always uses the funny fonts.”
AW: I know you’re a big comics fan and have written some
strips yourself. Could you tell us a little about them?
SY: I did a
couple of strips with Bob Covington who won the British Fantasy Society Award
for Best Artist in 1999. I always get really jealous when I look at Bob’s art
because he draws so well but I can’t draw at all. Those strips both appeared in
Legend.
I’ve
written some gag strips for Dave Bezzina but we haven’t decided who to pitch
them to yet. Again, Dave is a superb artist. He and Bob both did a great job of
illustrating Spare Parts.
I’ve
done various strips for SF Revolution
Comics. With those I usually try to vary the genres. A WWI ghost story, a
piece of cyber-erotica, a 2000AD-ish
black comedy, some reality-warping SF/Horror. I also wrote an apocalyptic
comedy-drama called ‘Dead Light’ for Fusion
from Engine Comics. And I’ve written a two issue Samurai fantasy story called Seppuku also from Engine Comics.
AW:
What projects are you currently working on?
I’ve
just finished a novella. It probably falls under the heading of
religious/philosophical horror but don’t let that put you off, it’s a really
fun read, honest! There’s a how-to-write-comics book that I was invited to
write a tiny section of, basically
just a very brief summary of my experiences writing comics. The book hasn’t
been finalised yet though so I don’t know when it’s out or even what it’ll be
called. And I’m catching up with my comics column and reviews and interviews
and stuff. After that, I don’t know, maybe another novella or even a novel.
AW:
Any last thoughts you want to leave us with?
SY: BUY MY BOOKS!
No, I should probably say something profound and uplifting. Um ... ah, sod it. BUY MY BOOKS!
