Kim Newman Interview

Kim Newman is a highly-respected journalist and author. His non-fiction works include Nightmare Movies, Apocalypse Movies and BFI Compendium To Horror. As a novelist he has penned the acclaimed novels The Night Mayor, Anno Dracula, Life’s Lottery, Dracula Cha Cha Cha and The Quorum. A noted film critic and ‘horror specialist’ he is a regular writer for Empire and Sight & Sound. More information is obtainable at www.johnnyalucard.com.

 

Can you give me a brief outline of your writing career?

I got an English degree from the University of Sussex, graduating in 1980, then hustled around as an unemployed slacker for several years – during which I wrote plays, worked on fanzines, did cabaret comedy music, wrote program notes for arthouse cinemas, and various other things that weren’t official work but turned out to be vaguely useful later. Eventually, in 1982/3, I began to sell film criticism (first, to the Monthly Film Bulletin, then City Limits – both of whom became regular clients) and short stories (first, to Interzone). I signed off supplementary benefit I after I sold my first book, Nightmare Movies, and got an agent (whom I’m still with) off the back of my first short story sale (‘Dreamers’, which was republished in a paperback collection). With Neil Gaiman, I edited a funny little book called Ghastly Beyond Belief and that led to a sideline career writing humour pieces for porn magazines.  In 1989, I sold my first novel, The Night Mayor, and started writing (as ‘Jack Yeovil’) books for Games Workshop. I’ve done more novels, non-fiction books, TV and film and radio scripts, a lot more criticism (currently, my regular clients include Empire, Sight & Sound, The Times, Video Watchdog, Venue and Rotten Tomatoes), a great deal of radio and TV broadcasting, DVD commentaries and documentaries, directed a short film (online at http://www.johnnyalucard.com/missinggirl.html), etc. 

 

When did you decide you wanted to become a writer?

When I was little, I wanted to be a fireman. Then, for a while, I thought I wanted to be an actor – and to advance that, I started writing little plays while I was at school.  Eventually, I found I was more interested in the writing than the acting, and frankly was better at it. I still do quite a bit of performance-based stuff …

 

Was Nightmare Movies a difficult book to write?

Not really. I began it when I didn’t know any better – the section on slasher movies was originally a fanzine article, and I used that as a sample chapter. The first publisher I sent it to bought the book (which, as it happens, was a mixed blessing) and, not knowing how long it was supposed to take to write a book, I got a complete draft done inside three months (whereupon, the publisher signed me up to hack out film star/director cash-ins but went bankrupt before they could be published, which is why no one has read my books on Marilyn Monroe, Dustin Hoffman, Al Pacino and Steven Spielberg). The first edition got some critical notice and I assume sold well (it’s very hard to find), but the publisher’s disappearing act didn’t help me much. A few years later, I rewrote the whole thing – it was the first thing I did on a computer – and it came out from a proper publisher. It would have been more difficult writing from scratch, but when I started I’d already seen most of the movies I was writing about and had kept notes on them – it was just at the beginning of the video era, so I was able to look at a bunch of things again before writing. Now, film books like this tend to take a lot more time to do because you can spend years watching all the movies again on DVD before writing a word – note how many recent film books have far fewer mistakes than earlier ones (where poor memory or dodgy secondary sources come into play) but are also duller reads as nit-picking writers spend so much time on information that the commentary tends to be either flatter or drowned by net-posting asshole ‘tude.  I’ve been asked several times to do an updated edition – though the book covers 1968-88, so an update would have to be at least twice as long. I might do a sequel (maybe even a prequel), but I’m more daunted these days by the amount of work it would take than I was when I started out. Nightmare Movies is still a book written substantially by a 23-year-old.

 

You’re a prolific author; have you ever written anything for the wrong reasons?

Not really. Those movie books, which would have been pseudonymous, were written for money at a time when I needed it, but I don’t think that’s necessarily a wrong reason. I’ve done work-for-hire stuff, but always tried to find a way to stay interested and deliver material that was better than it needed to be. I even think most of the stuff I wrote with Neil and Eugene Byrne for porn magazines was reasonably funny.

 

How important is it to separate your roles as critic and author?

I don’t, really. I’ve written fiction that spins out of criticism, and I try to keep the level of prose up in the criticism – which sometimes is compromised by things beyond my control like layout and house style.

 

When did you first start to make a living from writing books?

As I said above, I signed off benefit in early 1983 when I first made the deal on Nightmare Movies. That was a mistake – I should have waited for the first cheque to clear. I’ve made a living as a writer ever since; I’ve made what I think of as a good living since about 1990.

 

How easy is it to make a living as a writer these days? Do you think it helps being a critic, and a writer of both fiction and non-fiction?

It’s not easy at all, but it’s doable. I certainly benefit financially, as well as in other ways, from doing a lot of different things. I do quite a few tricky things for little or no money, but am sometimes well paid for things I find easy like appearing on television.

 

Which gives you most pleasure: novels or your non-fiction books? 

I find both satisfying, but in different ways. 

 

Which is your biggest selling book?

Good question, and I’m not sure I know the answer.  Anno Dracula was an actual technical best-seller (which is to say that it was the 43rd best-selling book in the US for a week or two) and has sold the most foreign editions, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some of the Jack Yeovil books (which have been kept in print forever while other books come and go) haven’t sold better in the long run. 

 

What is your daily routine?

I get up and write. That’s about it. I have to fit in other commitments, like going to press shows or broadcasting, but otherwise I’m writing. I have a few rituals, like going out first thing in the morning and getting take-out coffee from the café next door, but mostly I just meet the deadlines on the short-form stuff I’m doing, and fit in the longer projects around that. 

 

Which writers do you enjoy?

Here’s a non-exclusive list: Alfred Bester, Raymond Chandler, Jonathan Coe, Wilkie Collins, Richard Condon, Stanley Ellin, Philip José Farmer, Patrick Hamilton, Nigel Kneale, Greil Marcus, Paul McAuley, Robert Louis Stevenson, Peter Straub, David Thomson, Howard Waldrop, H.G. Wells, Jack Womack, Cornell Woolrich.

 

Your contemporaries are people like Neil Gaiman, Clive Barker and Pete Atkins.
Do you still read and admire their work?

Like most writers, I try to keep up with my friends’ books – though I’m a bit behind on Clive’s recent work. Those three all emigrated to America, which I’ve never found a tempting prospect. I have a big stack of to-be-read books, including some by close friends.

 

What books would you recommend that have been recently published?

Things I’ve read and enjoyed this year (not all recently published) include Ramsey Campbell’s Thieving Fear, Jon Lindqvist’s Let The Right One In, Marc Norman’s What Happens Next, Elmer Rice’s A Voyage To Purilia, Philip K. Dick’s The Game-Players Of Titan, Jon Courtenay Grimwood’s 9 Tail Fox, Roz Kaveney’s Teen Dreams, Christopher Fowler’s Ten Second Staircase, Thomas Hardy’s Tess Of The d’Urbervilles, Anne Billson’s Spoilers, Niven Busch’s The Furies, Lisa Tuttle’s The Mysteries, Jonathan Lethem’s The Fortress Of Solitude and Michael Marshall Smith’s The Intruders.

 

What advice would you give to aspiring writers?

Frankly, if you can do anything else do so. It’s not easy to do, the profession is overcrowded, most writers can’t support themselves solely by writing and you need to have something unique to say or sell in a climate where the industry is more comfortable with the familiar than the unusual. Otherwise, read widely – and that includes comics, magazines, newspapers, history, etc – and not just in your genre or special interest comfort zone. Work on the prose: learn how to write a good sentence, paragraph, page, chapter, story, while finding an authorial voice appropriate to whatever you’re writing. Don’t get so hung up on being a writer (ie: going to parties, conventions, award ceremonies) that you skimp on doing the writing (the sat-at-a-desk bit). 

 

What are your next book projects?

The next thing of mine which will come out is not a book, but Cry-Babies, a play for BBC Radio 4 due to be broadcast early next year. Otherwise, I’m working on a couple of ideas for fiction and non-fiction projects, but nothing announceable as yet.

 

Interview by Neil Daniels 2008