Paul Haines is one of the new generation of Australian SF writers, one of the first graduates of ClarionSouth in 2004. Since then he has won two Ditmars and an Aurealis Award for a body of work that can at its best be dark, gritty, surreal, unreal and disturbing. He is as Australian as Russell Crowe, and became a father for the first time earlier this year. He took some time between changing nappies to talk with Russell B. Farr.
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Where and when did your interest in SF and Horror begin?
The earliest memory I have of the genre(s) would be hiding behind a chair at my grandparents' house while trying not to stare at the automatons coming to life behind shop window fronts while Jon Pertwee battled it out. It terrified me and I had to watch every Doctor Who episode that aired after that (until I was about 15, I think, as I didn't like the new doctors by that stage and it was all starting to look a little too hokey even for me). So how old was I? 3 or 4?
Between the ages of 6 and 10, I spent all my pocket money on horror comics, any horror comic, all horror comics! I ended up giving them away when I transferred that money to purchasing Mad Magazine and have regretted it ever since. I've since managed to find about 10 comics that I must have missed in my original cull tucked away amongst cobwebs and Atari 2600 cartridges in the loft of my parents' barn.
My father also had boxes of paperbacks he'd picked up in garage sales etc and the bulk of them were spec fic. I was fascinated with the skulls on the covers of some of the books and they were the ones I picked up first (I must have been about 8 or 9). They were the Pan Horror collections that came out in the '70s. Short story horror was my first love, this followed into any SciFi collection or anthology I could get my hands on, most of them Golden Age pulp. I loved them. I still do. I think the short story and novella forms are brilliant for SF.
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Congratulations on the recent, long awaited publication of your first collection, Doorways for the Dispossessed. How does it feel?
Fantastic to see the book in print, nervous to hold it in my hands at Continuum 4, extremely disappointed with the almost non-existent relationship I have with the publisher, the lack of distribution of the book in Australia, and the fact that I still don't have a contract for that book. The initial elation from when Geoff Maloney told me that Prime had accepted my collection to the frustration and anger I feel now, well, it's a long story. Maybe I'm too impatient ... but I'm not the only one who feels this way.
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A lot of your fiction is dark and gritty, and doesn't deliver a happy ending. Is this a deliberate theme you're keen to explore?
I think horror traditionally delivers the unhappy ending, especially in short stories, and always in the comics. It was usually the twist that got the baddie or the protagonist at the end of the story, so in a way, it's almost the default ending for the darker genres of SF. And when you look at tv or film as a medium, you always get the happy ending, sometimes no matter how implausible, and most of them suck and scream out "formula ending for the masses". I need to write a few more happy endings though, and they're actually much harder to write than the nasty ones. The stories that I had in c0ck both had happy endings, although one was the happy ending for the bad guy. I'm mostly the bad guy. I like the bad guys. The heroes are boring and boxed in to their boundaries.
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Which of your own stories are your favourites?
My favourite is "The Last Days Of Kali Yuga". Explicit, violent, misogynistic and nasty — probably explains why I couldn't get it published in Australia, and NFG, the magazine that published the story, nominated it for everything they thought it could go in. It went on to win an Aurealis and a Ditmar. I'm still chuffed about that! I also like "Doorways For The Dispossessed" as it felt like the first 'really good' story I had written. And both stories exposed me to people who have helped me with my writing since (Cat Sparks with "Doorways" and the Agog! series; Geoff Maloney with "Kali Yuga" and getting me my short story collection).
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What is it about those stories that make them stand out?
For me it is the blending of fact and fiction. Both those stories are heavily cemented in my real life, and I love blurring them into the unreal. For other readers though, I think it is the travel writing reality that helps give these stories verisimilitude.
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I feel that Kali Yuga works because it has a strongly developed writer's voice, it is a work of storytelling, not merely telling a story. Do you think it's important for writers to develop a voice?
Stephen King. Douglas Adams. Irvine Welsh. (I imitated the first two authors' styles a lot in my teens). I heard that writers develop a voice and that successful writers had a voice. When I met Adam Browne, he had one of the most distinctive voices in writing I had read — pick up a story and you know almost in the first paragraph that it's his. So to be successful then, I wanted one too, but had no idea how to go about developing one. I still don't. At ClarionSouth, Grace Dugan asked me if I wrote the "Doorways" story that I had submitted as my application. She read it without the author's name on it and had connected it to the stories I was producing at Clarion, and at that point I realized maybe I had developed a voice. It was a nice feeling. (Or maybe Grace thought I was just rehashing the mire of the fractured male psyche!)
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A number of your stories feature graphic descriptions of bodily functions. Do you generally feel these are necessary to the story or are they there for shock value?
Both. Though people are more shocked by them. And only a few stories actually have this in there! ("Kali Yuga", "They Say It's Other People".)
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Congratulations on your recent entrance to fatherhood. Do you think we're likely to be reading any nappy stories in the near future?
Thanks and ha ha! Write what you know, they say. I do love to blend fact and fiction, and I've been thinking about doing it, and there are definitely big parts of it that I can mine for my memory/sex/infidelity story. And I just finished a 2,000 word children's story called "The Pumpkin", but I'm informed most parents wouldn't read it to their kids. Most. Not all.
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I understand you're looking towards writing novels. What is it about longer works that appeal to you?
Actually, writing a novel doesn't appeal to me at all. I figure it's the next step in the career though. I don't think you're taken seriously as a writer these days, unless you're a novelist. There's little fame and fortune in the short story these days, unfortunately, and even worse is that it's my favourite form of story to both read and write.
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How important to you is fame and fortune? What motivates you to write, and who do you generally write for?
My wife laughs at me because I would like to be famous. And I'd love to be a full-time writer with tonnes of cash (and not forced to write what a publisher demands). Except I've chosen writing to achieve those two goals? And speculative fiction at that! I think teenagers in cover bands down the local pub achieve more fame and fortune.
Motivation? It initially took me a lot of courage to actually start writing. This was what I really wanted to do and what if I wasn't any good at it? The ego is such a fragile thing. I originally wanted to capture my travel experiences, but I also didn't want to just do travel writing — I wanted to blend it with the SF genres. That got me started, but now it's actually guilt that keeps me doing it. I feel guilty if I haven't written anything for a period of time, usually a couple of months, and I start to feel bad, like the dream I want is slipping away and that if I don't keep at it, it will slip away. As for who I write for? I'm not a dark person (really!), but my sense of humour is definitely skewed, so I write what amuses me, what scares me, and, a lot of the time, what annoys or pisses me off. I always write for me. Dunno if this a good thing, but if I was writing for some other audience I think I'd lose interest in what I was doing.
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You've been a member of the SuperNOVA writing group for a number of years. Do you think this has influenced your development as a writer and if so, how?
SuperNOVA has been wonderful. It has been the most significant influence on my writing than anything else. We started as newbie writers and have grown over the years in skills, recognition and numbers. I learnt editing here (Tracey Rolfe is a fantastic teacher — unfortunately she now does this fulltime with one of the TAFEs, and only comes back when school's out for the year — and I got her for free!) I learnt structure. I learnt show not tell. I learnt the tricks of the trade. And you get exposed to the passionate subjects of others in the group and that can only broaden your mind and interests.
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Do you consider writing groups to be beneficial for writers in general?
It depends on the stage of your writing. If you're a newbie, a writing group like ours with where we're at can be pretty intimidating. I think we tell it like it is, so if you're looking for praise and have a fragile ego, don't join a writing group. Every story in my collection has been workshopped by my writing group. There's maybe only three stories I've had published that weren't. You need to find a group of writers at a similar level (a little bit better than you are is preferable so you do more of the learning than the teaching) and who like reading similar stuff.
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In what directions do you hope to develop as a writer?
I'd like to complete a novel, obviously. I'd also like to do a short story suite. And I dig converting my shorts into screenplays. I find it a really interesting process that allows you to see how much telling you were doing in your story when you thought you were showing.
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What opportunities do you see for a new writer in Australia nowadays? Do you feel that they are better off trying to get published in Australia or overseas?
Plenty of opportunities! Don't you love the internet and email? Publishing in Australia gives you feedback and recognition, and a better chance at the awards. Publishing overseas gives you better pay (but, come on, it's still shit), but you get a bigger audience. Distribution! Distribution! The downside is that there are hundreds of markets now. Which one is a good one? All the big mags seem to be closed for submissions permanently, and who knows what the hell you're subbing to with the small ones?
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Do you find you write stories with a particular market in mind?
Not really. I've done it a couple of times and succeeded (Antipodean SF, Shadowed Realms) but they were word-limitation markets rather than a theme. I've done the theme thing a couple of times too, and I haven't had any luck with it (fingers crossed I break the hoodoo this time). Mostly I have a story I like, and I keep sending it out until someone takes it. And then there's sending "Hamlyn" to ASIM, a most unlikely home, and a home that caused a bit of grief for the editors of that issue.
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How important do you think the small press industry is in Australia?
Without the small press, there's a good chance I would have chucked in the towel. That's as a writer. As a reader, there's almost no other place to get a local short story fix because the big publishing houses don't do them, and there wouldn't be an Australian Year's Best (ie from MirrorDanse or Brimstone Press). I'm incredibly grateful that there's this dedicated hardcore bunch of people keeping the SF world alive here in Australia. I could never be that dedicated.
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Which writers provide the greatest inspiration for you?
Stephen King, Clive Barker, James Herbert and Peter Straub for Horror. George RR Martin for Fantasy. Robert Silverberg for SF (though I don't like much of his Majipoor stuff, but maybe because it's fantasy). And Irvine Welsh and Iain Banks for the other stuff!
Locally, I'd like to say Brendan Duffy, but we're competing, so he'd think he was better than me if I said he was an inspiration, and really I just love reading his stories, he ain't no goddamn inspiration. But I wish I had his ideas. I really enjoy Geoff Maloney's work too — he does a lot of the third world stuff as well, especially the British colonial work, but he comes across deeper and more intelligent. Adam Browne's almost-completed debut novel is absolutely stunning. I wish I had his mastery of language and the ability to be funny without being crude. I wish his novel were mine.
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What's next for Paul Haines?
To finish my Workers Paradise story based on Duffy's polyembrony idea.
To finish my 30,000 word novella entitled "Wives". (If you thought my other stuff was nasty, this is bleak). I've been on and off at this for two years. To rid my brain of the story on viral memory activation re: sex and infidelity. To acquire a contract from Prime and failing that, to sell my collection to other interested parties. To steal Adam's novel instead of writing my own.
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