Join me at The Peculiar Life of a Writer, the blog of horror author Billie Sue Mosiman, where I share tidbits about my past, the strange condition I was left with a hard knock on the head, and Finding Poe.

Today, I'd like to welcome horror author G. R. Yeats to the Cerebral Writer. 
Thanks for stopping by!

1. Why don’t you start by telling us a little about your background?  How long have you been writing, and what inspired you to start?

Some say that you should only answer a question like this with the time from which you started writing seriously - whatever seriously means.  So, I'm going to ignore that and say I started writing when I was a teenager, about twelve or thirteen, and it was poetry and song lyrics for years and years. It was an outlet for me, my equivalent of keeping a diary by expressing my  feelings through creative analogies. I think I would be a lot worse off as human being without having that means of venting all the shit that builds up day in, day out. I wrote a few short stories in high school that were 'commented on' by teachers, but I never came back to prose until 2006 when I sat down and started work on The Eyes of the Dead.  Rather than break in gently with short stories, I decided I was going to write a novel and just went for it.

2. Your books all seem to be an interesting mesh of paranormal and gritty realism.  What kinds of research do you conduct before starting a project, and how long does it generally take?

If it's a historical project like the Vetala Cycle novels then the research comprises reading, lots of reading. Though I made a point of focusing on the diaries and reminiscences of the ordinary people caught up in the machinery of the war. I did a little research on the technicalities of the war and the strategies to get a sense of the time and place where I was setting each story but overall I wanted to evoke the atmosphere, the people and so on rather than just info-dump about things that the average soldier didn't care about. I tried to maintain that with Shapes in the Mist and Hell's Teeth.

3. Tell us about your new release, Hell’s Teeth.

Hell's Teeth closes the Vetala Cycle at the Gallipoli campaign when it came to a disastrous end in 1916. My editor said it is a very brave book as the style and structure are different to the previous two books - she said it reads like a prose poem and it is also very layered as ther protagonist, Thomas Potter, is shown to be trapped in the cycle of his own life; we see him as an ageing veteran tortured by his memories of the war as well as back when he was a young soldier on the front line and, as we pass between his past, present and future, the Vetala emerge into his life and begin to drag him into their hellish domain, the Grey and the Gravelands.

4. Who are your main literary influences?

It's been a case of stages for me - I would say that the primary influences on The Eyes of the Dead and Shapes in the Mist were Shaun Hutson, Guy N. Smith and James Herbert but with Hell's Teeth there was a definite shift, I remember noticing it and feeling it at the time and the influences now come much more from the literary end of the spectrum; Ramsey Campbell, H.P. Lovecraft, Arthur Machen and Thomas Ligotti, for example. This is not to say that the latter gentlemen have not always been  there as influences but I think it's safe to say that they are in the foreground for me now.

5. Your works all seem to have very dark overtones.  What drives your darkness (or is it really a driving light in disguise)?

My world view is a bleak one, I think it's fair to say. I wouldn't describe myself as pessimistic or cynical, I think to do so cheapens
one's own philosophical and political outlook, but other people have described me as such over the years. I remember reading an interview with Stephenie Meyer where she described her books as being full of a lot of light and I would say in that respect I'm the equal and opposite. I don't have much time for the cosy dualism of good .vs. evil because these are constructs created by humanity and when humanity dies out then so will good and evil, and not before. 

6. If you had to pick one all-time favorite horror novel, what would it be?

A tough question but I suppose if I was going to pick a novel then it would be Quentin S. Crisp's Remember You're One-Ball. It's a recent publication, granted, but it evokes for me a supernatural horror of England, the society we have here and how it functions and abuses individuals, without at any point becoming an explicitly supernatural novel. It's a great achievement.

7. Since this is The Cerebral Writer, which of your stories would you classify as the most cerebral?

Hell's Teeth - in terms of its narrative and style, it is the most elliptical and complex of the novels I have published so far, which is odd really considering it is the shortest as well.

8. Do you prefer writing short stories or novels?  For you, what are the setbacks and advantages of each?

I've enjoyed writing novels but I have a hankering to dedicate time to short stories and that's what I intend to do towards the end of this year - I have two collections planned after I finish up my novel-length commitments. I think horror works in the short form because you can focus on evoking mood and atmosphere rather than character and structure so much, in the traditional sense. My novels are all short novels so far and I like to think this is one of the reasons why they work. I think with the longer form it  becomes a case of managing that mood of unease throughout rather than building upon it in a short space of time to a single climax. With a novel, you have to work with peaks and troughs and manage expectancy in terms of how much revelation you allow to come through before bringing everything to its ultimate end.

9. Describe your writing process.  Do you visualize your stories in your mind’s eye, or do the words just flow?  On average, how long does it take you to finish a story from conception to final edit?

I'm an intuitive writer, I use little to nothing in the way of notes and planning, I start with a title and dive in and the stories more often than not shape themselves as I go. A short story can be the work of a night whilst a first draft of a novel can take one to two months, maybe three, depending.

10. What is the greatest piece of advice you might offer to the beginning horror writer?

Read widely outside and inside the genre, the latter is as important as the former.

Bonus Question: If the Undead could be summed up by a single philosophy, what do you think that would be and why?

I think the dead would have their own philosophy, their own language and culture from beyond the grave that we would have no way of knowing or truly comprehending. Why would they want to eat our brains when they know what's waiting on the other side and we don't? A single word, a breath from a dead man could stop the hearts of the living. 

Hell’s Teeth excerpt:

His was a prison of broken mirrors. 

He could remember nothing more than bits and pieces; fragments, shards, shattered glass slivers and distortion, nothing whole. Nothing was the way it should be.

It came out of the black rain. 
 
Its chassis, loose and clattering; wine-red, bubbled paint peeling from its
juddering hide, a heavy brown cancer of rust eating its way through the engine’s grille and the spokes of the pneumatic wheels. Its windows were dim with dust, streaked with grime, and they rattled violently in their frames. The vehicle was an LGOC X-Type bus, only sixty of them were ever built to prowl the streets of London yet X61 was daubed onto the side of this one. There was no enclosed cab, the Driver sat in shadow beneath a small canopy, exposed to
the elements, behind the engine, steering with deft, liver-spotted hands.  His uniform clung to his shoulders and thorax. The material was stiff, hardened with a flaking crust, patches of ancient blood. He had no head with which to see but see he did, in his own way. 

In the alcove towards the rear stood the Conductor; a Bell Punch machine hanging from cracked twin moons, the topmost buttons of his uniform. The metal of the antiquated device was dulled by age, leather-yellow fingers stroking it with a lover’s tenderness, whilst a blind egg of glistening mortuary matter wore the conductor’s cap. Pregnant sores formed a livid necklace around his throat, their discharge discolouring the unwashed china-blue collar of his shirt.

The Conductor cocked his head, catching a scent on the night air. He pulled a cord that hung above his head. A series of tinny chimes rang out inside the Bus. The dried skin on the Driver’s arms crackled as he turned left, following the Morse code instructions of his companion, depressing the accelerator. The Bus chugged, lurching forwards as the engine sped up.

pokita-pokita-pokita

From the black hole of the Driver’s neck, fresh blood ran freely, displacing scabs that had grown over the puckered edges of the stump, torn veins and arteries opening wide, disgorging a steady crimson flow, his fingers wound tight on the steering wheel. Thee Driver’s open throat gurgled wetly, excited, as the Night Bus went on its way, seeking, that it might find.

He heard the engine first and then he saw it, in the moonlight, coming for him.

pokita-pokita-pokita

The sound of its machinery was old and tired, a dying animal preparing for one last lunge, a wounded soldier, bayonet in hand, about to impale an unwatchful foe. He backed away from its approach. The one working headlight of the Night Bus burst into life, catching him in its glare. 

Run, rabbit, run, rabbit.

It bore down on him.

Run, run, run!

He turned and ran. His calf muscles clamping tight as he did, too old for this. At his heels, the Bus’s rusty thunder grew louder and louder, an oncoming storm, the end of everything.


About the Author:

G.R. Yeates is the critically-acclaimed author of the Vetala Cycle books. He has been accepted and published in small press anthologies  including Phobophobia from Dark Continents Publishing and Horror for Good from Cutting Block Press. He was born in Rochford, Essex and went on  to study English Literature and Media at university. He has lived in China where he taught English as a foreign language and he now lives in North London where he writes every day and sleeps very little.

For more information, check out his website, or visit him on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, or Pinterest.

I’m really excited to be here at The Cerebral Writer today. Though I have to say that I feel like I’ve been set a bit of a challenge. Being cerebral is probably not my preferred style – at least not while anybody’s watching. Still, I’m the sort of person who always likes to make a go of things so let’s see how I go.

Eclectic and interesting. I like the sound of that. Mind you, I like the sound of anything that makes what I do seem clever and special. And I’ll never turn down a chance to say a bit more about Dag-Lit. But today, I’m thinking, maybe I should start off by talking a bit about dags themselves.

A dag is the sort of person who just doesn’t care. They don’t care about whatever is fashionable, and we’re not just talking about clothes here. In pretty much any facet of life, dags are the people not paying the slightest attention to whatever the trends are in food or music or (most importantly in my case) books. They choose to wear what they want and listen to what they want and read what they want, regardless of what the magazines or newspapers or any other taste-makers are saying.

So I suppose every dag is daggy in their own special way, and if that doesn’t qualify as eclectic and interesting, I don’t know what does. But there’s something more to being a true dag. It’s not just that they don’t care about whatever is or isn’t in fashion. They also don’t care about what other people think about their chosen style (or lack thereof). So they aren’t hiding the fact that their tastes are their own – they’re celebrating it. They’ll dance down the street, singing along to some twenty-year-old pop song nobody else ever wants to hear again. They’ll proudly display the cover of the book they’re reading on the train, heedless of the scornful stares directed at them. In short, they have, what I think at least, is a really joyful approach to life.

And that, to me, is the most critical aspect to understanding Dag-Lit. It’s not just that they’re stories that pay little heed to literary trends. It’s that there’s an aspect that shares that joyful approach to life. That will (hopefully) make you forget yourself, just for a bit and be immersed in something wonderful and new. Maybe it will make you see things a little bit differently. Maybe it won’t.  But hopefully it will be a worthwhile experience all the same.

Before I finish, I just want to add another note to mention the person who has made this tour possible. Donna Brown is a huge supporter of independent writers and it’s thanks to her that you’re seeing me here today. She runs a great resource, The Indie Exchange, as well as her own site, Books, Bags and Catnaps. And she’s also a terrific writer – check out her collection of short stories, Double-Take Tales.

About Jonathan Gould's comic fantasy Doodling:

Neville Lansdowne fell off the world.

Actually, he did not so much fall off as let go. The world had been moving so quickly lately and Neville was finding it almost impossible to keep up.

Doodling is an engaging comic fantasy which relates the events that befall Neville after he finds himself abandoned by the world and adrift in the middle of an asteroid field. Douglas Adams meets Lewis Carroll (with just a touch of Gulliver's Travels) as Neville wanders through his new home, meeting a variety of eccentric characters and experiencing some most unexpected adventures.

About his Satire/fable/fantasy Flidderbugs 

As Kriffle the Flidderbug investigates why his fellow 'bugs find it impossible to agree on the pressing issue of how many points there are on the leaves of the tree on which they live, he finds that the truth is more complicated, and ultimately more terrifying, than he ever could have imagined.

Flidderbugs is a political satire, a modern fable, or maybe just a funny little story about a bunch of insects with some very peculiar obsessions.


For more information on Jonathan Gould and his books, check stop by his page on Facebook.

He also has an Amazon author page.