|
Book 14 in the Short Sharp Shocks! Series is Dan Howarth’s WW1 inspired Dulce Et Decorum Est. This book resonated with Dean as it brought back memories of a school trip of his own to the First World War battlefields of Europe.
DEMAIN PUBLISHING: Hi Dan, great to speak to you, can you tell us all about Dulce Et Decorum Est? DAN HOWARTH: The story is based on a school trip I took to Belgium when I was about fourteen. We went around all the First World War sites, including Ypres. In one of the museums they had a massive picture of a Lad’s Brigade from the north of England. One of the people in the picture looked just like me. It was bizarre, and vaguely terrifying. That image always stuck with me and to some extent helped to inspire my love of history. I wanted to write a story about doubles and that event popped back into my mind, the story started from there. DP: I have a feeling I know that painting though I don’t remember any of the people looking like me (though sometimes my visage gets compared to Himmler, which I suppose is another story altogether!) – as yours is a historical story, did you have any particular challenges... DH: ...trying to remember how I’d felt when I saw my own face in a picture that was nearly a hundred years old? Just kidding. The battlefields and memorials are steeped in history and tinged with sadness and sacrifice. The biggest challenge was portraying the feeling you get when you visit those places. Hopefully that’s something I’ve managed here. DP: Don’t worry, I’m positive you have...so as you saw ‘yourself’ in the original painting, when it came to writing Dulce Et Decorum Est did you feel that you ever became one of the characters? DH: I think I’ve already answered that to an extent. Just to state, I am the original Dan, not the evil one that pulled itself up out of the ground. But then, I would say that wouldn’t I? DP: Ha ha, yes, I guess you would. For those readers who aren’t familiar with your work (and I’m sure after Dulce is released this will change!) would you say you had a specific writing style? DH: No, I don’t think so. Yet. Like all writers, I’m still learning and trying to access my own voice. I’ve made good progress with that over the last year to eighteen months, but every day I learn something new by sitting at the keyboard and putting the work in. I’m currently really focussing on paring back my prose. I think I went through a phase of trying to write to impress, now I’m just focussing on the story and getting it down cleanly and concisely. DP: That’s interesting because a lot of writers that I speak too (particularly with regards to Short Sharp Shocks!) are saying the same thing of late. Perhaps then this is the ‘vogue’ right now (to be minimalist to some extent) but saying that it’s always been a case of ‘less is more’ hasn’t it? A lot to ponder there and perhaps deserves further discussion...all writers should read, so who influences Dan Howarth? And do you have a mentor? DH: Oh wow, how long am I allowed to talk about this one for? In terms of horror, I have a wide ranges of influences. The work of both Gary McMahon and Simon Kurt Unsworth is hugely influential to me. When I first discovered the small presses a few years back, their stories stuck out. They were exactly what I needed to read. Simon’s in that his book Quiet Houses is a modern M.R. James book. He picks up from Robert Westall in many ways and pushes the ghost story into the new century. Gary’s fiction has a miserablist quality to it. Often tinged with melancholy and regret, there is a feeling that his stories were bled onto the page, rather than written. Tales of the Weak and The Wounded is a fantastic example of his work. I’m lucky in that I almost do have a mentor. Over the years I’ve been good mates with Michael David Wilson of This Is Horror. We worked on the podcast together and all sorts of different things. We beta read for each other and discuss writing all the time. Perhaps mentor isn’t the right word but we have some damn good chats about writing (among other things) and he’s been a really useful person to be in touch with. Hopefully he would say the same about me! Who is my favourite author? This can change day on day. Right now, I’d say David Peace is right up there. I read The Damned United and loved it, but his book Nineteen Seventy-Four really haunted me in many ways. It’s not a horror book, but crime. The repetition in the prose, its concise nature. It hypnotised me. It’s fantastic. DP: Some great recommendations there! I’m hoping to work with Gary one day and I’m aware of Simon (we’ve worked together before on a couple of other projects) but I will check out Nineteen Seventy-Four as soon as I’ve got the chance...moving on to the future, what are you working on at the moment (if you can share with us obviously). DH: Last year I wrote a novel called Round Here, which is about a string of teen suicides in a small Northern town. It is complete but it needs a lot of work. I’ll go back to it at some point and pull it apart and mould it into something useful. Completing it felt like a big achievement. It has some good ideas in there as well as some nice bits of writing. It just needs a trim. I’ve also got a novella called Territory that I’m hoping to find a home for. It’s set in Finland in a remote hunting community. I’ve tried to write something about nationalism and community tensions. It’s definitely a horror story, just perhaps not as overtly supernatural as some other things I’ve written. I’m also 50k into another novel, which isn’t horror but perhaps there will be more news on that down the line this year. Maybe…hopefully… DP: Good for you, good for you. I’d love to read Territory as that sounds very much up my street. I’m becoming increasingly obsessed by Finland for some reason – it must be a calling. So – writer’s block, you ever suffer from it? DH: Thankfully not. Nothing stops me from writing. I do have the nagging voice of self-doubt that (I assume) every writer suffers from. But I’m of the opinion that I sit down every day, write as well as I can and as much as I can. Then, I can go back and fix it all. I try not to let self-doubt or worry get in the way on the first draft. I try and shove it all to one side and then just panic as soon as I’ve submitted a story to a market that it’s total crap. Ha ha. DP: Ha ha – nice one – if I have self doubt it comes one or two years after the story was published and then I wonder why / what the publishers saw in it etc etc (but then I go back and read the reviews and cheer myself up that I must have had something to say that resonated with somebody!). Do you outline your work before you start? DH: I tend to plan longer works in more depth but with shorter stories it’s a case of making notes of a few bullet points of the plot, character notes and perhaps a theme. I don’t like to get too prescriptive in my planning as it can suck the joy out of the work for me. A lot of the time I deviate and uncover things in the writing as it goes along so I prefer to have the freedom to move within the story. That said, I very rarely start something when I don’t know how it finishes. That’s the key, knowing the ending. Everything else is up for grabs. DP: Intriguing. For me I ‘think’ what happens is that there will be an image / scene or sometimes even a character that I build the story around – particularly in a story / novella...for the film scripts etc I suppose I do ‘outline’ to some extent but that might be more for a producer than me...again, I need to give some more thought to this...okay, you have a favourite genre? And did you learn anything from writing Dulce Et Decorum Est? DH: I love horror and always have. I think in terms of what I write about, I’m a lot more focussed on the darker side of fiction, be it straight up horror, crime or just the generally awful things humans do to each other. I don’t know why I write in that niche, I think it’s just what interests me and where my ideas seem to congregate. I tend to read a lot wider than I am currently able to write, however. Perhaps over time that will change. In terms of what I learned writing this story, I think the value of beta readers and feedback was right up there. I’m lucky enough to have some great beta readers such as Kev Harrison and Grant Longstaff. They provide not only vital insight but also quality control to let me know that I haven’t written a complete turkey of a story! Getting numerous opinions on your work allows you to weigh its strengths and weaknesses better than just one opinion. It doesn’t mean making every change recommended but giving yourself an awareness of what does and doesn’t work. I’d also say that I ended up doing a little bit of research for this story. I think knowing when to cut and run on research is important. It’s easy to sit in the library and read all day, much easier than to sit and write, but it doesn’t get a story published. DP: No, it doesn’t...okay, so I’m a film producer, pitch me your book: DH: A schoolkid’s life changes irrepably when he finds a picture of his doppelganger in a First World War museum. DP: Yeap, perfect, and if you were writing a synopsis: DH: A young history student on a school trip finds a picture of his long dead doppelganger on the wall of a Belgian war museum. As his homesickness and social awkwardness kick in, his experience of the Somme comes to replicate the horror of those that fought there more than one hundred years earlier. DP: I like that...finally Dan can you tell us all something about you which might be surprising? DH: Good question. It’s probably evident from the content of the story but I’m a big history nerd. I love reading about the two world wars, I think they’re not only ripe with ideas for stories but more importantly, they tell us so much about the world we live in today. It makes me wish more people read up on history and learned its lessons, rather than letting our country (I mean the UK) teeter on the brink of another clash with vile right wing ideology. Thank you for your time Dan, I enjoyed that immensely. If you would like to find out more about Dan then please visit: Website Address: www.danhowarthwriter.com Twitter Address: @danhowarth20
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
CategoriesArchives
November 2023
AuthorDean M. Drinkel |