For Gary Greenwood the end is nigh, his number is up, the grim reaper awaits. Maybe thoughts of an imminent demise are getting to him, playing dark tricks on his tormented brain. What other explanation can there be for the twisted creation that is Jigsaw Men, his latest (make that final) work of fiction? Frankenstein's Theorum, the Martian Heat-Ray, prosthetic porn - it's all here in shocking detail. The last demented outpourings of a doomed man? Read on. This email interview was completed in April 2004.

By ANTHONY BROCKWAY

Gary Greenwood: I'm not sure I ever made a conscious decision. English was about the only subject in school that I actually enjoyed and was any good at and putting pen to paper seemed to come fairly naturally. Didn't stop the first things I attempted being bloody awful, but there you go. I went from handwritten stories which were written purely for me with no intention of anyone else reading them to typing them out on an ex-girlfriend's typewriter. She had this ancient Royal which almost broke my fingers - you had to really bang the keys to get anything on paper. Somewhere along the line either me or her found out about a short story competition being run by the Welsh Academi, I submitted a couple of stories and one of them won second place.

Have you ever analysed why you have a deep-seated need to frighten/unsettle people through writing?

Gary Greenwood: Revenge is the first thing that comes to mind, but honestly I'm not sure. I've never stopped to think about why I write what I write. It's just the way my mind works.

Give us some of the key texts, films and records that have made Gary Greenwood the writer (nay, the man!) he is today.

Gary Greenwood: Okay, you got half an hour?

Books: my granddad got me into reading at an early age, starting me off on Westerns by J T Edson and Louis Lamour, then war stories by authors like Leo Kessler and Sven Hassel. Somewhere along the line, I picked up a Stephen King book - either The Stand or Christine - and everything changed. For years after I read primarily horror and The Stand remains one of my favourite books. I also did The Hobbit and then The Fellowship of The Ring in school so went out and bought The Lord of The Rings and devoured that - I still have the one volume copy which cost me a mere £5.50.
I collected Stephen King books for ages - I've got a shed load of first editions gathering dust on my shelves and I'm just waiting for him to die so they gain in value - and King's work was a big influence. Tastes change, though, and over the last few years I've read very little horror. Robert Anton Wilson is probably my favourite author right now, with Angela Carter close behind.

Films: The first film I can remember watching is the old Hammer Horror Curse of The Werewolf with Oliver Reed and I think I was about five or six when I saw it. As primitive as it may look today I still I have a fondness for it, and also for the whole slew of Hammer movies I saw as a kid. This is in the days when there used to be a double bill on TV - a relatively recent Hammer film tied with an old Universal one and watching them obviously had an effect on me and my tastes. My granddad feeding me a diet of Westerns, though, also influenced me and probably my all time favourite film is The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. I never really got into John Wayne but I can watch Clint Eastwood any day of the week, and not just the Dollar movies; High Plains Drifter, Hang 'Em High even Pale Rider. And Unforgiven is just superb, the perfect coda to all his Westerns.
Loads of horror movies, of course - The Omen, Alien, The Thing all still make me uneasy. Jaws is always near the top of my list as well, though my abiding memory of that is tied in with the family pet of the time, a Yorkshire Terrier. I saw Jaws when I was about eleven or so and had the dog sat on my lap. At the point where Hooper is underwater investigating the wreck and the head floats into view, my dog threw up all down my leg. Ah, the joy of pets.
I'm of the age to have been lucky enough to see Star Wars when it first came out as well. I was eight when I saw it and was just blown away. I went to see the special editions back in '97 or so and got so wrapped up in The Empire Strikes Back that at the end when Vader tells Luke "I am your father!" I sat stunned for a brief second just thinking "No!" I mentally shook myself, though, and realised I'd seen the film God knows how many times before that.
I could go on and on about movies - Brazil, Goodfellas, The Haunting, The Godfather, The Usual Suspects, The Third Man - but I've got to stop at some point.

Music: I'm still an unashamed fan of heavy metal; I got into it while I was in school by borrowing a copy of Piece of Mind by Iron Maiden off a friend and most of the CDs in my collection could quite comfortably sit in the metal section of HMV. Of course, HMV wouldn't have most of my collection as it's either all terribly dated for the most part - 70s bands like Gillan and Black Sabbath (though they're quite cool again aren't they?) - or stuff that few people have heard of like Masters of Reality or Trouble. As a sort of flip side, though, I'm a big fan of female vocalists and am listening to Tori Amos as I'm typing this. With that in mind, Evanescence are a perfect match for me.

There's never any surplus fat in a Gary Greenwood book: your stories are tightly plotted, well storyboarded, with strong visual scenes - were comics an inspiration or is this a cinematic influence?

Gary Greenwood: To be honest, that's something of a surprise - I've always thought most of my stuff isn't very visual. I tend to hold back on descriptions of places and even people by and large because I prefer the reader to put their own faces to my characters. It's what I do when I read so unless there's anything specific that needs to be mentioned, I tend to leave it alone and just sketch an outline - the readers can do the colouring in.

Gary Greenwood: Primarily it's a case of writing about what you know which is why there's a pub scene in just about everything I've written as more than one person has pointed out. That there is a contrast between the ordinary and the supernatural works out quite well, I guess, but that was more luck than judgement!

Your writing style is quite understated - straightforward diction and syntax, measured, easy to read prose - do you work hard to achieve that effect, or does that just happen to be the way you write?

Gary Greenwood: At the risk of sounding smug, it's just how I write. I enjoy writing dialogue and have been told by enough people that I can do that quite well so I enjoy doing the whole talking heads thing, advancing the plot through dialogue. I tend not to get too flowery with imagery, I think, and just try and get the story told.

You often utilize religious motifs and themes in your work, particularly in The King Never Dies and What Rough Beast. Why this preoccupation with the theological?

Gary Greenwood: I love religion, quite simply. Can't believe a bleeding word of any of them, but they fascinate me, particularly Christianity. The basic tenets of Christianity - being nice to each other and respecting other people - are fine. What bugs me is the attendant need for mankind to start throwing together belief systems around these thoughts. Christianity was a contemporary of the Roman pantheon of gods - why are the latter relegated to the status of mythology and the former not? Why should so many millions believe that their beliefs are right and everybody else's are wrong? How arrogant is that?
In both The King Never Dies and What Rough Beast I give the two bad guys - one of whom may be the Devil, the other who actually is - speeches that I had a whale of a time writing. My musings on religion and God, basically, put into the mouths of my characters.
People often say how terrible it is that so many wars and deaths have been caused by religion, but I think that's too simplistic - people cause wars and use whatever excuse happens to be handy, whether it's religion, politics or ideologies. If we could just get shot of all these out dated belief systems and educate people better I'd feel happier about the ultimate fate of humanity.

Do you find it frustrating that 'horror' is often too readily dismissed as somehow second-class fiction especially in an age when mainstream writing is forever borrowing from genre fiction?

Gary Greenwood: The very day I read these questions I'd been in my local branch of Ottaker's bookshop, moaning and bitching to my fiancée that there's one case of horror tucked away in the corner of the shop like the poor relative of science fiction and fantasy. Sure, everyone loves The Lord of The Rings movies - me included - and they've done wonders for the resurgence of fantasy fiction; sci-fi's never really too far away and films like The Matrix and Minority Report keep it alive in the book shelves; but horror? No, publishers over here in the UK seem to think that nobody's interested in reading about horror. Sure, we'll go and watch the Scream movies, or Dawn of The Dead, 28 Days Later, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Dog Soldiers which prove that horror is a viable market, but we don't want to read about it.
I've been to the British Fantasy Society's convention every year for the last seven years or so and at every one the same conversation will inevitably pop up: is horror dead? The same arguments are offered up time and again and the same hopeful conclusion is made - that horror's coming back soon, kids, just hang in there!
"Horror" is a handy marketing tool for the publishers, yet another pigeon hole that they can put authors into and push as the new Stephen King or the new Clive Barker. Publishers like clear sections and definitions: you have a book with vampires? Ah, that goes in the horror section. You have a book with robots? Ah, that'll be science-fiction. You have a book with robotic vampires? Oh bugger. Well, that'll never sell.
I know several writers who have written very successful horror books but have used pseudonyms when publishing books that fall outside the genre. It's as if publishers feel that readers will get confused when an author they're familiar with writes something outside of a particular field. For God's sake, we're readers! That automatically confers a level of intelligence upon us which means we can cope with the fact that our favourite author has written something that doesn't feature zombies or whatever. Let us make up our own minds.
One of the most talented writers I've ever read, Dan Simmons, has had nowhere near the success he deserves here in the UK because publishers don't know how to market him. He's written one of the best horror novels ever - Carrion Comfort - but also a superb space opera - the Hyperion novels - which is hard sci-fi, as well as thrillers, but because he can't be pigeon holed and marketed as a "horror writer" or a "science fiction writer" he doesn't get as much attention as he should.
It as if publishers have forgotten the idea that you can market someone as a "good writer".
Sorry, I'll get off my high horse now.

Is there a big difference between the American and British horror markets and do you consciously write for either of them?

Gary Greenwood: As I've just ranted, the UK horror scene is pretty stagnant as far as the big publishers go. It's the independents such as the excellent PS Publishing and Razorblade press who are still putting books out that don't have Stephen King or Dean Koontz on the cover.
The States is a little better because they have such a large audience that they can produce mass market paperbacks of little known authors.
I don't write for one or the other, to be honest - I write the stories I want to write and if they get published that's a bonus.

How do you manage to fit writing around your day job?

Gary Greenwood: I don't really! My writing has become incredibly patchy over the last year or so, partly due to some personal problems I had a while back, partly because I've been so busy in work lately. It's a crap excuse, I know, but it's true.

You use the structural device of detective thriller in your latest work Jigsaw Men as indeed you did in earlier books (Jack Bradley in The Dreaming Pool and Aitch in The King Never Dies were essentially detectives). Why does this format particularly appeal to you?

Gary Greenwood: I like hard boiled detective fiction in both books and movies, and I enjoy having my protagonists run around looking for stuff. From a writing point of view, it helps keep the reader interested: there are questions that need answering, there are people that need to be found and the only way to resolve these issues is to keep turning the page.
I used a very deliberate technique in both The King Never Dies and Jigsaw Men by ending almost every chapter on a cliff-hanger. If the reader has engaged with the stories or the characters in any way, by the time they get to the end of the chapter they won't want to stop, they'll want to find out what happens next.

There's a lot going on in Jigsaw Men: Frankenstein's Theorum; martians; the underground porn industry; Anti-Old World Order terrorists - what's it all about Gary and what will your psychiatrist make of it all?

Gary Greenwood: A few years ago, Razorblade Press released an anthology called Hideous Progeny, where the basic idea was: "write a short story about what the world would be like if Dr Frankenstein existed". The story I wrote formed the sort of template that Jigsaw Men used - I included Frankenstein's Theorem and the Martian Heat-Ray and dropped hints about the world outside the story.
I had such fun in that world that I came up with the idea for Jigsaw Men and pitched it to Pete Crowther at PS Publishing. Thankfully he liked it and asked me to write it.
Free from the restraints of a short story, I could now develop the world and the alternate history and, again, had so much fun that I'm tempted to break my own maxim of never writing a sequel.
And my psychiatrist thinks I'm completely sane, I'll have you know.

What direction do you see your writing going in over the next few years?

Gary Greenwood: Downhill! For me, writing is a hobby. I harbour no delusions that I'll be able to do this full time at any point and have always said that first and foremost I write for me. If my stuff gets read and/or published then it's great; if I get paid for it that's even better but - and I said this after The Dreaming Pool was published in '98 - if I never get published again, I'll be happy.

Finally, is it true you are going to be murdered?

Gary Greenwood: Yes, Christopher Fowler is planning to kill me off, I'm afraid. He's put me in his new book The Water Room after I won the prize at the British Fantasy Convention last year.

RIP Gary Greenwood... your untimely death will be a great loss to us all.

Gary's latest novella - the brilliant Jigsaw Men, is an exotic mélange of horror, alternative history, sci-fi and detective thriller. It is currently available through PS Publishing and Amazon UK.

©Anthony Brockway 2004

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