Why I wrote BERSERKER

  By William Meikle | February 20, 2012 - 9:14 pm | Uncategorized
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Vikings vs Yeti. What more do you need to know? Actually they’re ALMA. Same beasts, different name.

For Tor and Skald this is their first viking raid, their minds are full of thoughts of honor and glory. What awaits them are beasts – huge, hairy and fanged, the Alma will not suffer intruders in their domain. When the Vikings slaughter a female Alma they soon find themselves in the middle of a bloody revenge. Now they must stand and be counted, for their destinies await in the mountains, where the hairy ones dance.

Big beasties fascinate me.

Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I’ve also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I’m usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature – what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

BERSERKER

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On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man’s dabbling with it, can throw up.

Back at the movies again, another early influence was the Kirk Douglas / Tony Curtis movie THE VIKINGS. There’s that, and when I was very young I would be taken ten miles over the hill to the shore at Largs on the Ayrshire coast. There’s a memorial there to The Battle of Largs where Scots fought off Vikings. The story was told to me so often it sunk into my soul, and as kids we spent many a day in pretend swordfights as Vikings (when it wasn’t Zorro – but that’s another story

All those things were going round in my head when I first sat down to write BERSERKER. And there might be some of THE THIRTEENTH WARRIOR in there too.

Why I write – Part 2

  By William Meikle | February 17, 2012 - 5:13 pm | William Meikle, Writing
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I didn’t chose writing, it chose me. The urge to write is more of a need, a similar addiction to the one I used to have for cigarettes and still have for beer.

I -nearly- became a scientist. I have a degree in Botany, specialising in the archaeological history that can be gleaned from studying peat bogs. But I couldn’t get a grant for a PhD, then I followed a woman to London and ended up by accident more than design in a career in IT. I actually took it seriously for a while, but the need to write slowly welled up and subsumed it a few years back.

When I was at school my books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The steelworks shut and employment got worse. I -could- have started writing about that, but why bother? All I had to do was walk outside and I’d get it slapped in my face. That horror was all too real.

So I took up my pen and wrote. At first it was song lyrics, designed (mostly unsuccessfully) to get me closer to girls.

I tried my hand at a few short stories but had no confidence in them and hid them away. And that was that for many years.

I didn’t get the urge again until I was past thirty and trapped in a very boring job. My home town had continued to stagnate and, unless I wanted to spend my whole life drinking (something I was actively considering at the time), returning there wasn’t an option.

Back in the very early ’90s I had an idea for a story… I hadn’t written much of anything since the mid-70s at school, but this idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I had an image in my mind of an old man watching a young woman’s ghost.

That image grew into a story, that story grew into other stories, and before I knew it I had an obsession in charge of my life.

People write for different reasons: some want to make a lot of money, some want to exorcise some personal demon, others because they are driven and can’t imagine doing anything else. So “accomplishment” is relative. The most important thing is to be able to clearly convey what you want to say to your readers (and if that means using a split infinitive, then so be it.). How you do that, your style, is what you have to work at.

For me, I want to entertain, and if people like my work, I’ve succeeded.

Why do I do it?

  By William Meikle | February 16, 2012 - 8:48 pm | William Meikle, Writing
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I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as “weird shit”. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading fortean, paranormal and cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me, and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.

So, there’s that, and the fact that I was grew up with the sixties explosion of popular culture embracing the supernatural and the weird. The Hammer horror movies got me young, and led me back to the Universal originals. My early reading somehow all tended to gravitate in similar directions, with DC comics leading me into pulp and to finding Tarzan.

Tarzan is the second novel I remember reading. (The first was Treasure Island, so I was already well on the way to the land of adventure even then.) I quickly read everything of Burroughs I could find. Then I devoured Wells, Verne and Haggard. I moved on to Conan Doyle before I was twelve, and Professor Challenger’s adventures in spiritualism led me, almost directly, to Dennis Wheatley, Algernon Blackwood, and then on to Lovecraft. Then Stephen King came along.

There’s a separate but related thread of a deep love of detective novels running parallel to this, as Conan Doyle also gave me Holmes, then I moved on to Christie, Chandler, Hammett, Ross MacDonald and Ed McBain, reading everything by them I could find.

Mix all that lot together, add a dash of ZULU, a hefty slug of heroic fantasy from Howard, Leiber and Moorcock, a sprinkle of fast moving Scottish thrillers from John Buchan and Alistair MacLean, and a final pinch of piratical swashbuckling. Leave to marinate for fifty years and what do you get?

A psyche with a deep love of the weird in its most basic forms, and the urge to beat the shit out of monsters.

What attracts me to stories about the end of the world?

  By William Meikle | February 12, 2012 - 3:23 pm | William Meikle, Writing
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There’s something cathartic about seeing everything being torn down. It also makes for amusing daydreams when the boss is being a tool or when the commute seems to take forever. And who doesn’t think they couldn’t do better at building a society if given a chance?

So there’s that, and there’s also the sheer spectacle of the thing… the same reason people like to slow down to look at car crashes. There’s a “there but the for grace of God” vibe you get when watching or reading the world being torn down. Emmerlich and Devlin hooked into that early and have made a pot of money out of those very same vibes.

I started my fandom of the genre young and at first it was from a Science Fiction perspective. The British ones from the ’50s and 60′s got my attention, in particular John Wyndham’s DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS and THE CHRYSALIDS. Them, and A CANTICLE FOR LIEBOWITZ were my earliest introductions to the form. After that came tales of cosmic disaster, mainly Lieber’s THE WANDERER and Niven and Pournelle’s LUCIFER’S HAMMER. My interest was further piqued by Terry Nation’s TV show THE SURVIVORS, and Stephen King’s THE STAND, the first to being real horror to the genre IMHO. But my favorite in the genre is by Robert Macammon. His SWAN SONG is a roller coaster blockbuster which eschew’s King’s religious trappings for non-stop action and gritty realism mixed with a slug of the supernatural. My kind of tale.

There is much that is good about civilisation that I’d certainly miss if it went, such as books and entertainment, central heating and modern medicine. But on the whole, civilisation as mankind defines it is hell-bent on destroying the ecosystem and we’re too stupid to stop shitting where we eat. I don’t think it’s a matter of why or why not. We’re now at a stage where it’s only a matter of when. I just hope it’s a few more years yet.

But I have a small island off the coast of Newfoundland in mind. It has an artesian well, plenty of fish and seabirds to harvest, and some run down buildings from an abandoned settlement that could be made habitable quickly. I’d have to dig up the small graveyard to make sure nothing’s coming up out of the ground, but it’s been disused for many years, so any revenants will be a bit brittle by now :-)

In the meantime, I’ve got more stories to write. I destroyed Southern England most recently in THE CREEPING KELP, Manhattan in CRUSTACEANS and NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO, and most of North America in THE INVASION so I think it must be Scotland’s turn next.

Westerns and me

  By William Meikle | January 28, 2012 - 5:26 pm | William Meikle, Writing
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My early childhood was steeped in Westerns.

I have my Granddad to thank for days spent watching Wagon Train, Rawhide, Bonanza and Gunsmoke, then later on, The Virginian and The High Chapparal. He also introduced me to Louis L’Amour and others as I devoured his collection of Western paperbacks.

Lewis Belding: I got 18 people in my hotel! Where are they gonna go?
The Stranger: Out.

At the same time there was a steady diet of films both on TV and, best of all, the Saturday afternoon Matinee at the local picture house where they re-ran John Wayne movies on a regular basis.

As I entered my teenage years, the Westerns took a new turn, with Eastwood’s “Man with no name” featuring prominently, and I discovered Peckinpah in The Wild Bunch.

The Stranger: You’re going to look pretty silly with that knife sticking out of your ass.

Westerns may have taken a back seat in popular culture since those heady days of the ’60s, but I’ve remained a lifelong fan, all the way up to the present day.

So it’s no surprise to find myself writing one or two. THE VALLEY was my first attempt, although that plays in my head more like a Harryhausen monster flick than a western.

The Stranger: Somebody left the door open and the wrong dogs came home.

I’ve recently tried to recreate more of the spaghetti western feel in a couple of short stories for anthologies and now I feel I’m ready for a challenge.

I’m halfway through a novel, THE RAVINE, that just feels right to me. Plus I’m having a lot of fun.

I ain’t going nowhere.

The year is off to a great start

  By William Meikle | January 21, 2012 - 5:24 pm | William Meikle, Writing
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It’s been a great start to the year.

Firstly I sold the audio rights to the Midnight Eye series to Seven Realms Publishing. Look for three seperate audio books coming later this year and next year. These will be my first full length audio works, and I’m excited to see how they turn out.

Secondly, the 18th of January saw the publication of CARNACKI: HEAVEN AND HELL, my first hardcover collection. Dark Regions Press have done a stunning job on this one, with particular praise going to Wayne Miller for the cover and six stunning interior illustrations. It’s available in 2 editions

A Leather-bound Deluxe Thirteen Hardcover w/slipcase: $99.00, numbered 1-13, 6”x9”, bound in leather, signature page which is signed by both author and artist, front cover stamped and spine stamped with the title and the author’s name, includes artsy end papers, colored book ribbon with nice full colored header, 60lb. natural vellum stock, a beautiful slipcase and dust jacket.

A 100 Signed and Numbered Limited Hardcover: $45.00, numbered 1-100, 6”x9”, bound in leatherette, signed by the author, stamped on the spine with the title and author’s name, includes 80lb. natural vellum end papers, colored book ribbon, multi-colored header, 60lb. natural vellum stock, and has a beautiful dust jacket.

The first review is in, and it’s a very positive one here at the British Fantasy Society

And third but by no means least, I sold one of the Carnacki stories, THE SISTERS OF MERCY, to Nightland magazine in Japan. It will appear, in Japanese, in issue 4 which will be a special Occult Detective issue. And I’ll be alongside a reprint of a Robert E Howard story, which makes the fanboy in me very excited indeed. All that, and a nice big pay day on top makes it one of my favorite sales of my career to date.

As ever, details of all recent sales and links to buy publications are at my website. It’s had a wee spit and polish over the weekend, so come on over and have a look. williammeikle.com

About THE CONCORDANCES OF THE RED SERPENT

  By William Meikle | January 12, 2012 - 12:08 pm | Scotland, William Meikle, Writing
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The Concordances of the Red Serpent is a thriller set in the USA, Canada and Scotland and is my attempt at one of those glossy caper movies Hitchcock used to make back in the day with a blonde in peril. Mix that with a bit of Da Vinci Code type musings on alchemical secrets and stir well.

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Patty is a cataloguer of rare manuscripts, working on part of a newly discovered journal of a 14th Century alchemist. Just another dull day on the job. But after mentioning it in her blog she gets to the office to find everyone brutally murdered. Now she’s on the run with the incomplete journal, trying to find the rest, pursued by a killer who wants the secret of eternal life it contains.

The quest leads her halfway across the world to the castles and misty history of Scotland. She thinks she’s looking for a manuscript. But the things she learns on the journey all point to the 14th Century alchemist himself, a man who is still very much alive.

Most of my work, long and short form, has been set in Scotland, and a lot of it uses the history and folklore. There’s just something about the misty landscapes and old buildings that speaks straight to my soul. (Bloody Celts… we get all sentimental at the least wee thing).

But I think it’s the people that influence me most. Everybody in Scotland’s got stories to tell, and once you get them going, you can’t stop them. I love chatting to people, (usually in pubs) and finding out the -weird- shit they’ve experienced. The protagonist in THE CONCORDANCES is mainly based on a bloke I met years ago in a bar in Partick, and quite a few of the characters that turn up and talk too much in my books can be found in real life in bars in Glasgow, Edinburgh and St Andrews.

I grew up in the West Coast of Scotland in an environment where the supernatural was almost commonplace. My grannie certainly had a touch of “the sight”, always knowing when someone in the family was in trouble. There are numerous stories told of family members meeting other, long dead, family in their dreams, and I myself have had more than a few encounters, with dead family, plus meetings with what I can only class as residents of faerie. I have had several precognitive dreams, one of which saved me from a potentially fatal car crash.

All these things came together in my head when I wrote The Concordances of the Red Serpent. It is a thriller set in the USA, Canada and Scotland and is my attempt at one of those glossy caper movies Hitchcock used to make back in the day with a blonde in peril. Mix that with a bit of Da Vinci Code type musings on alchemical secrets and stir well.

Win as much as $100 in store credit at Dark Regions Press

  By William Meikle | January 3, 2012 - 1:59 pm | Uncategorized
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Example photoWin as much as $100 in store credit for taking the most creative photo you can including a Dark Regions Press published book(s) (one or multiple) and submitting at least one sentence telling them what you like most about their products and/or company!

The prizes are:

1st Place: $100 in store credit
2nd Place: $50 in store credit
3rd Place: $25 in store credit

The photos that they deem most creative, interesting or funny will be awarded the prizes, while the runner-ups will be included on their website and in the newsletter.  They  encourage you to get creative!

The winners will be announced on Tuesday, February 28th.
Please send your submissions to:
photos@darkregions.com

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Terms: submissions without at least a one sentence blurb will not be considered. By entering this contest you are agreeing to let them use your photo(s) and blurb(s), should they be accepted as a runner-up or a winner in the contest, on their public “Our Customers” page and in the public newsletter. Photos must include at least one book published by Dark Regions Press to be considered.  Store credit will expire after six months of receiving it.

Why I write about CARNACKI

  By William Meikle | January 2, 2012 - 12:19 pm | carnacki, William Meikle, Writing
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Dark Regions Press Hardcover

9 short stories and a novella

I’d love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

Most of the aforesaid characters are trademarked and off-bounds for writers without paying licensing fees. Carnacki however is fair game.

Nowadays there is a plethora of detectives in both book and film who may seem to use the trappings of crime solvers, but get involved in the supernatural. William Hjortsberg’s Falling Angel (the book that led to the movie Angel Heart) is a fine example, an expert blending of gumshoe and deviltry that is one of my favorite books. Likewise, in the movies, we have cops facing a demon in Denzel Washington’s Fallen that plays like a police procedural taken to a very dark place.

My interest goes further back to the “gentleman detective” era where we have seekers of truth in Blackwood’s John Silence Sherlock Holmes… and William Hope Hodgson’s Carnacki.

Carnacki resonated with me immediately on my first reading many years ago. Several of the stories have a Lovecraftian viewpoint, with cosmic entities that have no regard for the doings of mankind. The background Hodgson proposes fits with some of my own viewpoint on the ways the Universe might function, and the slightly formal Edwardian language seems to be a “voice” I fall into naturally.

I write them because of love, pure and simple.

 

CARNACKI: HEAVEN AND HELL ebook

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CARNACKI: HEAVEN AND HELL Hardcover

» http://www.darkregions.com/carnacki-heaven-and-hell-by-william-meikle/

CARNACKI: HEAVEN AND HELL sample pages

» http://www.scribd.com/doc/69042534

 

It’s all about the struggle of the dark against the light. The time and place, and the way it plays out is in some ways secondary to that. And when you’re dealing with archetypes, there’s only so many to go around, and it’s not surprising that the same concepts of death and betrayal, love and loss, turn up wherever, and whenever, the story is placed.

The ghost story is no different in utilising the archetype of the return of the lost from the great beyond, but a good one needs verisimilitude.

If the reader doesn’t believe wholeheartedly in the supernatural element, even if only for the duration of the story, then they’ll be looking for the Scooby-Doo escape, the man in the mask that means everything before was just smoke and mirrors. To pull off a good ghost story, you need to get past that, and engage the reader at an emotional level.

The best stories allow us to overlay our own fears and nightmares on a backdrop provided by the writer. Some people are terrified of dark corners, others of sounds, others still of silence. A mixture of the primal fears in the story will have readers constantly looking over their shoulder, and almost afraid to reach the end. For me, that’s what makes a good ghost story.

I also love exploring the Occult Detective sub-genre, in the Midnight Eye Files stories, in this series of Carnacki stories, and with Sherlock Holmes in REVENANT, and a series of short stories. I intend to write a lot more of it, and that will definitely mean more Carnacki to come. THE DARK ISLAND novella in this collection is a focal point for Carnacki — in it he has learned that the bounds of his research are much, much wider than he had previously thought. That’s going to give me plenty of scope for further stories and explorations.

Dark Regions have done a stellar job on this production. It’s a wee dream come true for me, to see my Carnacki stories in a high quality hardcover, with some stunning illustrations both on the cover and inside. Wayne Miller has really captured the essence of the stories in his black and white drawings. This is a quality product and I’m very proud to have helped in making it all come together.

You may notice while reading that Carnacki likes a drink and a smoke, and a hearty meal with his friends gathered round. This dovetails perfectly with my own idea of a good time. And although I no longer smoke, witing about characters who do allows me a small vicarious reminder of my own younger days. I wish I had Carnacki’s library, his toys, but most of all, I envy him his regular visits from his tight group of friends, all more than willing to listen to his tales of adventure into the weird places of the world while drinking his Scotch and smoking his cigarettes.

Dark Regions Press ebook

8 short stories

Coming up in 2012/13

  By William Meikle | January 1, 2012 - 11:09 am | William Meikle, Writing
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I have a few publications in the pipeline for this year and next, including the following in print

  • CARNACKI: HEAVEN AND HELL (Hardcover Collection, Dark Regions Press)
  • CRUSTACEANS (Novel, Dark Regions Press)
  • DANSE MACABRE (Hardcover Collection, Dark Regions Press)
  • THE NIGHT OF THE WENDIGO (Hardcover Novel, Delirium Press)
  • FROM DEEP WITHIN THE SHADOWS (Hardcover Collection, Dark Regions Press)

Forthcoming short stories:

  • Descanse en Paz – Undead and Unbound anthology (Chaosium)
  • Ghost nor Bogle shalt thou fear – Danse Macabre anthology (EDGE)
  • Call and Response – Cthulhu 2012 anthology (Mythos Books)
  • The Dreams that Stuff is made of – Zombie Kong anthology (Books of the Dead Press)
  • The Color of the Deep – Call of Lovecraft anthology (Evil Jester Press)
  • Hairs and Graces – Best New Werewolf Tales 1 (Books of the Dead Press)
  • The Silent Dead – ALT-Zombie anthology (Hersham Horror)
  • Solstice Dreams – Penumbra ezine

There’s several other things in the pipeline as well, but those have yet to be firmed up and get contracts signed.

Alongside a steady year of ebook sales in 2011, and the prospect of the new print titles also coming out in ebook in 2012/13, the future is looking pretty darned pleasant at the moment.

As ever, all details and buying links for the above available at my website at http://www.williammeikle.com