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A Much Bigger Story

interview with Martin Livings

Martin Livings has been writing and publishing fiction since the early 1990s. This month saw the release of his first novel, Carnies, through the defunct before it happened line of Dark Suspense novels from Lothian Books. In a big year for the Perth-born writer, Martin left to base himself in London for twelve months, and took time out from a busy schedule of cultural absorbtion to participate in this interview.

Where and when did your interest in SF and Horror begin?

Perth and birth, I think. I was a very early reader, well before I started school, thanks to growing up in a house full of books. I progressed pretty quickly from the usual kids’ fare into science fiction, I don’t know why exactly. The space race was still happening in those days, and by the time high school came around there was the shuttle and Skylab and all of those exciting high-tech things going on. I pretty much cleared out both my primary and high school libraries of science fiction books.

Horror came a bit later, though one of my earliest bits of writing, from when I was around seven or eight, talks about reading a book about "a man who becomes a were wolf (sic) when the moon is whole". That’s an eerie precursor of things to come! In my teens I began to drift towards the darker fiction, finally leaving my Heinlein and Asimov behind me and picking up Stephen King and Robert McCammon. And cheap paperback horror novels available at delis, like Snowman and Cannibals, were like junk food for me!

What provided the inspiration for the novel?

Carnies was a book that developed very, very slowly for well over a decade. I can barely remember its beginnings, but I know I was working on it in 1992, because I mention it in my biography for the first story I got published, in Aurealis. But it's changed so much over that time that I doubt anyone would recognise it today, except for the whole werewolf thing, which, as I mentioned before, is a long-term obsession of mine. The location came from my twenties, when my friends and I used to go on caving trips in the forests around Margaret River in WA's south-west, a fantastic area which was very evocative and inspirational. As for the carnival, I genuinely have no idea. It was probably a movie I saw or something. I wish I could say it was Tod Browning's "Freaks", but it was most likely "Howling 6"! But the core idea of loneliness and alienation, and the desire to be loved and belong, well, that's the old, old story, isn't it? We've been telling stories about this since language was first invented.

In Carnies you've gone for a tale of lycanthropy, but it's not about werewolves. Was there any reason for avoiding standard werewolf tropes?

I did that to keep myself interested. I wanted to set Carnies in as close to the real world as possible, and in the real world people can't just morph into animals. So I conducted my research of human and canine anatomies, did heaps of sketches of bones and muscles, tried to figure out how it would all work, and in the end, I just made it up. I really wanted to explore how real people would react to a situation like this, and the best way of doing so was to keep it all as realistic as I could, so that the emotions would be genuine. Of course, that makes it sound very pretentious, which it really isn't. It was also to keep myself interested, to not just take the same route as every other werewolf story. It worked for me, which hopefully translates to the reader.

While the book's initial publicity describes the book containing "equal helpings of horror, action and humour", I definitely found the work leaning more to action and horror, with a smaller element of black humour. Were you consciously looking to make the novel humorous or was that something that developed with the writing?

Actually, the early drafts of Carnies had a lot more humour in them. There was some rather witty Joss Whedon-esque banter between characters, and funny situations and funny reactions, and it was a hoot and a holler. The problem was, these moments stood out like sore thumbs. William Faulkner said, "Kill your darlings", and he was right. The humorous bits were just not appropriate for the book, and I went through with a scythe and excised pretty much all of them. I tried to leave a dry and black humour in it, though, especially in the early relationship between the two lead characters.

Without going into detail and spoiling the ending, you've left this novel wide open for a sequel? Was it important to the story to do this?

When I was writing the book, I had in mind the structure of a horror movie, rather than a horror novel. Therefore, it needed the initial bit of action to draw the audience in, before the usual character and setting establishment. It needed three acts. And, following that to its logical conclusion, it needed the open ending. I knew as I was writing it that I wasn’t going to tell all the stories to be told in its world, and I wanted to keep some of them for myself, or for the next book if I ever get around to writing it. I also wanted to give the impression that the story could easily be the middle of a much bigger story, extending both forwards and backwards in time from the week or so that Carnies takes place within. I love stories like that, and characters with partially revealed pasts.

So, to answer your question — it wasn’t so much important for the story as for the structure. But now, having set myself up like that, I guess I’ll have to write a follow-up. Not a sequel, though, that sounds tacky!

Did you find it difficult making the transition from writing short stories to novels?

They do say that writing a short story is like running a hundred yard dash, while writing a novel is running a marathon, and it’s completely true. It was very difficult to break the dash habit of writing short stories to write Carnies, which led to an ongoing cycle of frantic activity and utter collapse during the process. But I think by the end of it I started to work out how to do it. I think the hardest thing to do was to not continually go back and rewrite while still writing, as I tend to do with a short story if it’s not working. You just have to plough on through until the end, and fix it in the first rewrite. I’m terribly at rewrites, though, as my boredom threshold tends to kick in. Why rewrite something? I’ve already written it. Time to move on. That’s a very hard mindset to kick!

How is London treating you (and how are you treating it)?

London is amazing. Of course, I’ve never been further afield than Mauritius up until this date, so coming from Perth to London has been a massive culture shock, with the emphasis on “culture”. Many of the buildings are older than my country. I can’t quite get my head around a lot of it. I do have the advantage of not having to work, of course, thanks to a generous grant from the Australia Council and an even more generous partner who’s earning money while I stay at home and write all day. That’s a very nice way to experience London, as a man of leisure!

I understand that your next large project is a near-future sf-thriller set in London. How does it feel to be working on this while living in a city that is steeped in so much history?

London seems the perfect place to set a story like this, since any futuristic story needs to be built on the foundations of its history. Setting it somewhere like Perth or Sydney or Hong Kong just wouldn’t have had the same feeling. The book is set in the entertainment business, as well, which London is a bustling hive of, if not exactly its centre. And the total CCTV coverage of the entire city should play a large part in the feel of the book as well, that knowledge that you’re constantly on camera. I don’t know how much of its history per se will play a part in the book, but with any luck it’ll trickle through the writing, as things tend to do, and give a nice feeling of future antiquity!

How does it feel to have a novel published?

It’s so many things mingled together, excitement and nerves and stress and frustration and humility, just a weird mishmash of emotions, both appropriate and inappropriate. But on the whole, I’d say it’s amazing. I haven’t had the experience of seeing the Carnies in a bookshop yet, sadly, but just seeing it listed on web pages, photos taken at the launch, receiving emails from people who’ve read it and liked it, it’s just astounding. For me, I still find myself looking at my author’s copy and thinking, gee, it looks just like a real book, doesn’t it? It still doesn’t quite feel real. But I’m sure it’ll sink in, sooner or later!

With the uncertainty at present in the Australian dark fiction/horror market due to the scuttling of the Lothian line, where do you see horror developing in Australia?

At this point, novel-length adult horror books really have no outlet in the main publishing houses in Australia. That would be a dire situation, if it wasn’t for the small presses, who continue to support every facet of speculative fiction in this country, especially the less commercial stuff. Publishers like Mirrordanse and Altair have been doing sterling work in this area for decades now, putting out fine books that the big companies wouldn’t touch, plus of course the works put out by Ticonderoga Press. Especially exciting at the moment is the creation of Brimstone Press by the folks behind Shadowed Realms, which is dedicating itself to horror publishing. But until we have someone as successful as Stephen King, or even another GM Hague as we had in the nineties, the large press publishers won’t touch us with a barge pole. Maybe if these Lothian books are a hit?

How important do you feel independent press is in this genre (and all of SF in Australia)?

I think independent press is utterly vital to Australian SF. It really is the place where authors can be themselves, write what they want to write without as many commercial pressures on them. It can also a fantastic stepping stone towards larger things, since the usual state of affairs is that you can’t get published if you don’t already have a book published, the great Catch-22 of the industry. Independent and small presses will often take chances on new authors, something the larger presses rarely do. But most of all, books from independent press are interesting , not just whatever flavour of fantasy or conspiracy fiction is currently charting best. They give us a chance to read something different.

You've been a keen supporter of online publications (your association with TiconderogaOnline stretches back to almost its very beginning in 1999). How do you see online publications as having developed, and where do you see them going to?

I don’t see online publications as being that much different to the printed variety, to be honest. For me, I treated them all as markets. Having been an early adopter of the Internet — my first connection was text only, email and newsgroups, and even that was a big step up from the bulletin board systems I’d been on prior to that on my 300 baud modem — I never had that feeling that it was somehow less worthy a medium than the printed page. Of course, it’s nice to have a physical copy of the magazine in your hands, and it’s still considerably easier on the eyes to read off paper, but as PDAs and the like become more prevalent, and we inch closer to the advent of viable e-paper, I think the online magazine will only gain in respectability. Of course, the recent closure of Ellen Datlow’s SCIFICTION fiction section was a huge blow to online publications, as it was not just comparable to physical magazines like Asimov’s and Analog, it really excelled them in quality on a regular basis. So to lose that market was a body blow to online publications everywhere. But as long as there are markets such as TicOn and Shadowed Realms, I’ll be submitting to them, and hopefully people will keep reading them!

A lot of your fiction is dark, and rarely possesses a "happy ending" (many don't even possess a happy beginning). Is this a deliberate theme you're keen to explore?

I think that’s just me, actually. Happy endings aren’t nearly as interesting as tragic ones, from a speculative point of view; conflict and drama are what power these stories, and fluffy bunnies having a jolly wizard time at a party kind of lacks that narrative drive. Not that I’m averse to a happy ending, in fact in my eyes many of my stories do have a happy ending. Just maybe not from most readers’ perspective!

What are you working on at present?

Presently I’m working on a few projects. Firstly is a near-future science fiction novel set in London, probably more satire than anything else, but with action and horror elements thrown in for good measure. I also plan to write a follow-up to Carnies, of course, since at least a few people have asked for one, and I have another horror manuscript waiting for a second draft and fleshing out. I also have a conga line of novels behind those, plus a couple of kids’ books, believe it or not! So I’m not likely to be bored, writing-wise, for a while yet!

Are you still looking to produce short stories or are you looking to focus predominantly on book length works?

Oh, I'm definitely still wanting to produce short stories, I love writing them. Not every idea is big enough for a novel, after all! I'm rushing together a submission for the Macabre collection from Brimstone Press, and fiddling with a couple of other shorts at the moment. I don't think I'll ever break the habit of a lifetime.

What can we expect to see from you in the near future?

Well, funnily enough, I’ll have a story, “Dwar7es”, in an upcoming issue of TiconderogaOnline. Isn’t that a handy plug? I also have a story in a few anthologies due sometime in the not-too-distant future, including The Book of Shadows and Australian Dark Fantasy & Horror: The Best of 2005, both from Brimstone Press. Also from Brimstone is the much-anticipated Fading Twilight, which features novellas from myself, Shane Jiraiya Cummings and Lee and Lyn Battersby. In April 2008 my story "There Was Darkness" will be in Fantastic Wonder Stories. And beyond that? I guess we’ll just have to wait and see!

Perth-based author Martin Livings has been writing short stories for a variety of publications since 1990. Along the way he has picked up nominations for both the Ditmar and Aurealis awards. Before taking a year off and basing himself with his partner in London, Martin reluctantly worked in IT during the day to pay the bills, and at night dreamed of fame and fortune. And monsters.
Livings' short fiction has appeared in the award-winning anthology Daikaiju!, as well as Borderlands, Agog! Terrific Tales, and Eidolon, among many others. He has been listed in the Year's Best Horror and Fantasy Recommended Reading, and has recently appeared in Year's Best Australian SF and Fantasy Volume 2.
He can be found online at www.martinlivings.com.