| Author | Message | ||
     Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.77.233 |
...Allyson Bird, BFS Award-nominated author of Bull Running for Girls: 'I write what I want and hope that it strikes a chord. That is what I did with Bull Running for Girls. I always bear in mind that horror has always been in mainstream fiction but has never been acknowledged as ‘horror’ as such. Take Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, one of the more famous full blown blood bath revenge tragedies. Or One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, and Alice Sebold’s Booker Prize winner, The Lovely Bones - this one is a compelling read about the murder of a child. Horror surrounds us every day...' Read more here: http://stevenjensen.wordpress.com/an-interview-with-allyson-bird/ | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
Thanks Steve! I really appreciate the interest.  | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
Hey Ally, love the sound of the coming novel! Were you influenced at all by 'The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase' or 'His Dark Materials' trilogy? Incidentally, is everyone on here a famous horror writer? An unnerving and yet strangely beguiling thought!  | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
'Were you influenced at all by 'The Wolves Of Willoughby Chase' or 'His Dark Materials' trilogy?' Why would you say that? | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
The ages of the characters and the whole alternate history of Britain thing. Was just wondering if any exposure to children's fantasy had subliminally influenced the plot? I have a theory that strong engagement with such works - the modern day equivalent of fairy-tales - is what turns us into horror fans as adults. Maybe I'm wrong... but for me Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lewis Carroll, Alan Garner and later Robert E. Howard were my literary introduction to the fantastic. And I well remember 'The Weirdstone Of Brisingamen' scaring the living bejesus out of me! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
Ah - not that I'm aware of but I don't doubt that so much comes out in our writing that has been in the subconscious for quite a while. Des showed me some connections that I wasn't totally aware of until he pointed them out to me. All fascinating. You can deliberately place themes in a book and be unaware of others. Hey - you are up late. You don't have insomnia too do you? | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
Guess I wasn't suffering from insomnia after all lol. I've heard of steampunk but never dipped into the genre. That's all about alternate reality timelines as well isn't it? It's a theme I find fascinating. Ever read 'The Man In The High Castle' by Philip K. Dick? | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
Unfortunately not but I like the idea of writing a story within a story....'Several characters in The Man in the High Castle read the popular novel The Grasshopper Lies Heavy, by Hawthorne Abendsen,' | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
Just one of many inspired tricks Dick pulled on his readers. He's the literary equivalent of a master illusionist distracting us with exciting plot developments while messing with our heads in the ramifications for his characters view of their own existence. Alan Moore pulls off similar feats in the comicbook field. If you haven't read either I can't recommend them highly enough! | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
Will do :>) | ||
| Ramsey Campbell (Ramsey) Username: Ramsey Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 195.93.21.74 |
Hey, thanks, Ally! And good to see Lisa getting the appreciation she deserves. One more bit of intertextuality: in Kingsley Amis's alternate history The Alteration the choirboys discuss a forbidden book. It's The Man in the High Castle. Strikingly, some of the elements in it that most startle them are elements it has in common with our own world - a typically witty Amis effect. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
My pleasure, Ramsey - and Lisa deserves the appreciation too. I can't get THE NEST out of my head :>) | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
You know I've only ever read one short story by Kingsley Amis and it was utterly brilliant and a sci-fi/horror to boot! 'Something Strange' (1960) had the high-concept "messing with the reader's expectations and sense of reality" of P.K. Dick coupled with the cerebral entropic pessimism of early J.G. Ballard. I've often wondered if he wrote any comparable material and will make a point of seeking out 'The Alteration' now. Thanks Ramsey! | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.129.86 |
He wrote a ghost novel, too, Stephen: The Green Man. | ||
| Allybird (Allybird) Username: Allybird Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 79.70.28.249 |
It was televised too. Albert Finney played Maurice Allington. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.129.86 |
Indeed it was. | ||
| Stephen Walsh (Stephenw) Username: Stephenw Registered: 03-2009 Posted From: 82.4.20.22 |
I saw 'The Green Man' when it was first broadcast and thoroughly enjoyed it. Very funny and thought Finney was superb as the randy old alcoholic. | ||
| Gary Fry (Gary_fry) Username: Gary_fry Registered: 03-2008 Posted From: 86.27.129.86 |
Not autobiographical at all, Kingsley . . . | ||
| Steve Jensen (Stevej) Username: Stevej Registered: 07-2009 Posted From: 82.0.79.95 |
SJ: Which books have influenced your thinking, and your writing, more than any other? And whose writing style do you aspire to equal? AB: Two books which instantly come to mind are Robert Aickman's The Wine Dark Sea and Lisa Tuttle's Nest of Nightmares. Robert Aickman and Lisa Tuttle are, to me, my 'gods of writing.' Their strange, often 'unexplained' stories, linger in my mind long after I have read them... Read more here: http://stevejensen.eu/an-interview-with-allyson-bird |