Author Interview with William Meikle

1. When did you start writing?

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.

So it all started with a little ghost story, "Dancers"; one that began by winning me 100 pounds in a ghost story competition, then ended up getting published in All Hallows, getting turned into a short movie, getting read on several radio stations, getting published in Greek, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, and getting reprinted in The Weekly News in Scotland.

So, the first story came easy. It was only after that the rejections started to come in. But I'm nothing if not stubborn. I've been at this since 1991 and can't see myself stopping now.

2. What was your journey towards becoming an author like?

I was a voracious reader as a kid - everything I could get my hands on from DC and Marvel comics, very British ones like The Hotspur, The Victor and The Valiant, all of the children's classics, and most of our local library's genre section which included everything I could find from Verne, Wells, Rider Haggard, Conan Doyle, Tolkien, Arthur C Clarke, Alan Garner and Edgar Rice Burroughs. At the same time, I was making my way through my granddad's paperbacks - the Pan Books of Horror, Dennis Wheatley, Alistair MacLean, Agatha Christie, Louis L'Amour, Len Deighton, Ian Fleming and Ed McBain all figuring large.

I found John Wyndham, H.P. Lovecraft and Michael Moorcock round about 1970 at the age of 12 and things were getting set pretty much for the rest of my lifetime's reading preferences by the time Stephen King and James Herbert came along a few years later.

That's the backgound to what I am as a writer and an indication of where it all comes from.

As for the journey...

I grew up on a council estate in an industrial town in the West of Scotland where you were either unemployed or working in the steelworks, and sometimes both. Many of the townspeople led hard, miserable lives of quiet and sometimes not so quiet desperation

When I was at school, books and my guitar were all that kept me sane in a town that was going downhill fast. The local steelworks shut and unemployment was rife. The town suffered badly. 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 only started writing again fifteen years later in my 30s to escape from a very dull day job. At first, I was mainly selling to UK small press, for the love of it, markets, but as my skills improved, I started to get into better paying gigs, built up a wee portfolio of professional payment short story sales, and used that to leverage my way in with some publishers for novels. I was lucky enough to go full time in 2007. Haven't starved us yet.

I've written horror, fantasy, science fiction, crime, westerns and thrillers. Plus the subgenres, like ghost stories, occult detectives, creature features, sword and sorcery, etc.

And in my case, it's almost all pulp. Big beasties, swordplay, sorcery, ghosts, guns, aliens, werewolves, vampires, eldritch things from beyond, and slime. Lots of slime.

But I don't really think of them as being different. It's all adventure fiction for boys who've grown up, but stayed boys. Like me.

3. What can you tell me about your latest book? (Feel free to include an excerpt.)

My current main focus is on the S-Squad series from Severed Press, following the exploits of wee sweary Scottish squaddies as they travel the world beating up monsters. They're proving to be very popular, bringing in a nice income both in English and German language editions. Sharing an excerpt is problematic... they swear. They swear a lot... but I have an awful lot of fun with them, harking back to those pulp roots I mentioned earlier.

We're up to number 16 in the series. OPERATION NORTH POLE is the newest and sees the lads attempting a rescue at a British scientific base. But there are white terrors in the arctic winter, red in tooth and claw... and somebody had been engineering big ones.

One of the fun things about this latest one was indulging in some 'Bondery'. with secret bases needing to be blown up, and evil cackling bad guys to dispense with.

So far, the team's various members have come up against giant Isopods, revenant Nazis in an Antarctic UFO base, velociraptors in the Congo, a variety of Ice-Age beasties in Siberia, bloody huge snakes in Amazonia, a legend in the waters of Loch Ness, giant spiders in an ancient desert city in Syria, Death Worms in Mongolia, big hairy howling things in the Yukon and a big blobby thing in London's sewers... among other things...

There are more close encounters of the big beastie kind in their futures.

Next up for the lads in #17...Chupacabras in the Yucatan.

4. What sort of methods do you use for book promotion?

These days you have to have a higher visibility, that's for sure. That means I do put myself about, on Facebook and Twitter mostly, although I've yet to be convinced that all the jumping up and down and waving of hands has any effect whatsoever on sales. The publishers like it though, as it looks to them like free advertising. Plus, I enjoy the ebb and flow of social media, and it allows me to talk bollocks to my heart's content. I also have a long running email newsletter with over 1000 subscribers, many of whom have been with me for ten years and more.

Apart from that, I don't do much of anything. I think going to conventions might help me boost sales, but as I live on a modest budget in the middle of nowhere in Canada, there's no chance of me attending any unless an invite is forthcoming. I'm not holding my breath.

The best thing I can do is grow a readership, one reader at a time, and keep delivering entertaining stories.

5. Where do you get your ideas for stories?

For me, it's mainly inspiration. I wouldn't write at all if the ideas didn't present themselves in my head. I find I get a lot of ideas clamouring for attention all at once. I write them down in a notebook that never leaves my side, and sometimes one of them gathers a bit more depth, and I get a clearer image. At this stage I find myself thinking about it almost constantly, until a plot, or an ending, clarifies itself.

Once I've written down where the story should be going it quietens down a bit. Then, if I find myself still thinking about it a couple of days later, I'll probably start writing the actual story. At any given time, I have about 20 ideas waiting for clarity, two or three of which might end up as finished works.

That's the inspiration part. And that continues when I start putting the words on paper. I've tried writing outlines, both for short stories and novels, but I've never stuck to one yet. My fingers get a direct line to the muse and I continually find myself being surprised at the outcome. Thanks to South Park, I call them my "Oh shit, I've killed Kenny" moments, and when they happen, I know I'm doing the right thing.

There is also a certain amount of perspiration, especially in writing a novel. But I find if it feels too much like work, I'm heading in the wrong direction and it usually ends up in the recycle bin.

And, yes, there's a certain degree of desperation in that I want to get better, to make the big sale, to see my name in lights, all that happy stuff. But I try not to think about that too much. :)

6. What are you working on right now?

I'm between books as of last week.

I've just delivered a sci-fi/horror crossover novella to Weird House Press, a specialty weird fiction publisher who does high-end deluxe, illustrated hardcovers alongside the paperbacks and ebooks. I've been working with this particular publishing/editing team for more than a decade now and have a shelf of deluxe, illustrated, hardcovers of my work to show for it. It makes me feel less of a wee pretendy writer. Next up from them is something close to my heart, a new collection of particularly Scottish supernatural stories. Just today I got to see the proposed cover. It's going to be stunning.

As for my next thing... I've got another monster series in its early stages, about a team who hunts sea monsters for money. Book One did pretty well, so Severed Press have tapped me for another... this time it's going to be something big and hungry menacing big-business oil wells off the Brazilian coastline. Plotting has begun.

7. Any advice for other authors?

Subbing short stories to the pro markets was the single most important way for me to learn my craft - I got feedback from people who knew what makes a good story and were able to tell me where I was going wrong - and where I was going right. Those are invaluable lessons for a new writer, and to learn them from some of the biggest names in the business is not something that should be lightly dismissed.

Also, if you make a sale, you get to have your name alongside top pros in publication. I've got to rub shoulders in print in the same magazines and anthologies as people whose books I've been reading for decades. It's an experience I wouldn't have missed for the world.

In short, my advice is, if you're writing shorts, why not give the pro markets a try? My short stories mostly sell at professional rates these days, but it's not just the money - it's the kudos and self-belief that keeps me going forward.

ABOUT WILLIAM:

William Meikle is a Scottish writer, now living in Canada, with over thirty novels published in the genre press and more than 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers including Dark Regions Press and Severed Press, and his work has appeared in a large number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory. Find him at williammeikle.com