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The Coffin Walk (Book 40 in the Short Sharp Shocks!) is by Richard Farren Barber, is available now for pre-sales and is being published on the 30th November.
DEMAIN PUBLISHING: Hello Richard, how you doing? Let’s dive straight in. Tell us a little about yourself and how / why you became a writer. RICHARD FARREN BARBER: Hi, yes, I’m Richard. I grew up with a love of books; I have a clear memory from primary school where we would walk down to the local public library in Hyson Green, Nottingham (a fantastic old Victorian building) to be allowed to pick/return books. I can even remember picking up my first Doctor Who book there (I don’t remember the exact title, but it was by Terence Dicks and it starred the Daleks) and then ploughing through the series. And I suppose that’s why I became a writer; because I loved reading. I loved pouring myself into a book and entering a different world. I see writing as an extension of that experience. When I’m writing I am immersed in the story and that thrill of the first draft, where I’m watching the story unfold at my fingertips, is intoxicating. DP: Indeed it is! What’s The Coffin Walk about? RFB: A group of four people go on ghost hunting tours. In truth, they never expect to find anything and they each have their own reasons for taking part, but then they stumble upon a genuine supernatural event and the story follows what happens. DP: Who are your protagonists? RFB: There’s a lot of history in this group. There are only four of them but they’ve been meeting for their ghost hunting trips for three years and they’ve fallen into an uneasy conspiracy where everyone has their own roles; Harry likes to think of himself as the leader and the others let him think that, Steve is just a little apart from the other three and is immersed in his tricks and toys. And Amy…it’s a complex relationship between the narrator and Amy. DP: Did you have to do much research before / during the writing of your story? RFB: The coffin walk in the story is a real place; and just a few miles away from where I live so it’s somewhere we go for a walk. In that way I’ve done a lot of research just walking up and down the route. Also, I’m the sort of person who stops at every blue plaque in London, every tourist information panel in a city or every inscription on the side of a castle wall. I’m useless at retaining the information long term, but I love reading about places and their history. So I didn’t so much research The Coffin Walk as absorb it. DP: Ah, that’s really cool. Creatively Richard what would you say is your biggest success so far? RFB: Hmm. How do you define success? Commercially my biggest success is a novella called The Sleeping Dead which was published by DarkFuse in 2014. Unfortunately, DarkFuse closed a few years ago so it’s not currently in print. Creatively…hmm. I’m trying to stay away from saying something trite along the lines that whatever I write next is my biggest creative success. So, maybe instead of obsessing on success I’ll focus on what I’m most proud of writing. I’ve had six novellas published (The Power of Nothing; The Sleeping Dead; Odette; Perfect Darkness, Perfect Silence; Closer Still; and All Hell [which appeared in Demain’s WW1 / horror anthology The Darkest Battlefield in 2018) and one novel (The Living and the Lost). All of them have a place in my heart; I’m not saying they’re all creatively brilliant – hopefully I’ve got better at telling a story over the years – but they all mean something to me. I’m currently working on a novella and a novel which I’m excited about, but I’m going to keep my mouth shut in case I mess them up. But I would say I consider something successful if I finish writing it, people get to read it, and they find something to connect with in the story. DP: I’m with you there...when you can actually type The End or put that last full stop (or even a final FADE OUT: ) there is such a sense of achievement isn’t there...which books or authors do you read and do they influence you? RFB: I tend to read across the piece; horror, science fiction, fantasy, crime, thriller, literary fiction. In a quiet moment last year I worked out that if I didn’t buy any more books, the unread books already on my Kindle would last me through the next ten years. Reader, I have bought more books since then! In terms of authors, my ‘go to’ list is Stephen King, John Steinbeck and Robert Westall, but there is a great wealth of talent both inside the horror genre and beyond. Names that spring to mind include Ramsey Campbell, Michelle Paver, Adam Nevill, Neil Gaiman, Paul Tremblay and Sarah Pinborough (The Death House is awesome!!!). But there are just so many great stories out there. As well as the mainstream I read a lot of Independent Press with authors such as Simon Bestwick, Peter Mark May, Mark West, Mercedes M. Yardley, and Dave Jeffery. I would really need to pull up my list of books read from Goodreads to give a proper account of my reading habits, I’ve missed a large number of great authors (even as I’m saying this more names are popping to mind, but I could spend much of the day creating a list!). In terms of influence, I think everyone is influenced to some degree by what they read. My early writing read like very bad Stephen King, but hopefully I’ve got beyond that. Sometimes I will be reading something and notice the impact it’s on me having and try to work out what the writer is doing to achieve that effect. Sometimes I’ll spot a particular trick and consider whether I can (and should) incorporate it into something I’m writing. Perhaps the most direct influence, though, is when I read something and it sets off an image or an idea in my head. The author usually goes in a different direction but the idea stays with me like a seed waiting to germinate. Perfect Darkness, Perfect Silence came about in that way. It was from a single image in a Tim Lebbon novel in which someone was dumping a body overboard. DP: We love Tim’s work too and you’ve named some great writers there, several of whom have (or will be!) worked with Dean / Demain. I was wondering, what does ‘horror’ mean to you? RFB: I have two answers! Firstly, horror is an emotion. It’s a visceral response to what is usually a sense of danger. But for me as an art form (and there’s a danger I’ll trip over into pretension here, so hold onto my hand and haul me back if I go too far) horror is able to reflect on the core questions of humanity: why are we here? What is important to us? Is there anything else? I love the fact that in a horror novel you can be dealing with the surface of ‘the monster’ but then you can peel back to what that means for the characters and by extension, what it means for us as individuals. DP: Is there a horror novel or film coming out soon that you’re looking forward to? RFB: The next Stephen King. Always…that said, I tend to save up my ‘Stevies’ and read them when I know I will have time to really focus on them, rather than reading five pages at night and then falling to sleep. (I hearby apologise to all the authors whose works I’ve maimed through death-by-a-thousand-cuts as I stagger through the pages each night.) I don’t really watch a lot of horror films. I think horror is particularly interesting in that there feels like a wide gulf between films and books. That said, it’s closing to some extent with recent adaptations such as BirdBox, The Silence, and The Girl With All The Gifts. DP: Ah, we’ve heard great things about Girl With All The Gifts but haven’t had time yet to watch it...is there anything you are scared of Richard? RFB: I’m not sure afraid is the right description, but I find ghosts fascinating. When you look at all the tropes within horror; vampires, zombies, etc I find myself most attracted to ghost stories. I love what they represent, and the potential they have to explore so many emotions. The Coffin Walk was actually intended as an anchor story for a collection of my ghost short stories I was putting together. DP: Creatively is there anything you’d like to do that you haven’t done yet? If so – what is it? RFB: A fair few years ago I tried to write a TV script as part of the BBC’s Writers’ Room project. I wrote the opening few scenes but it was really, really difficult and I realised it was not the same skillset as writing prose and I’d have to invest in learning new skills. At the time I set it aside (although that TV script became my novella, Closer Still) but maybe one day… DP: Best of luck! Couple of quick / fun ones, Marvel or DC? RFB: I don’t really watch superhero movies. That said, I watched Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and thought it was absolutely brilliant. The sort of film where you come out of the cinema talking about what you’ve just seen. DP: And finally then, tell us something surprising about you? RFB: There’s a lot of autobiographical details that seeps into my stories; The Coffin Walk is an example where I use real life and give it a little twist. Depending on what readers have picked up already they probably know I have an affinity with Nottingham (Where I was born and grew up. I now live in exile over the border in Derbyshire) and support Nottingham Forest (this year…surely this year). The football savvy observant reader may even enjoy playing “Where does that name come from?” where I use Forest players as character names. They may already have picked up on my politics (this year… surely this year). I could go for the mundane (I’m colour-blind; this actually impacts on my writing as I have to make a conscious decision to check how I refer to colours in my stories) to the unusual (I have drive a police boat). Ha ha – driven a police boat?! We’d love to do that. Thanks a million for your time Richard and best of luck with The Coffin Walk. If you would like to connect with Richard direct: Website: www.richardfarrenbarber.co.uk Twitter: [email protected] Facebook: facebook.com/richardfarrenbarber
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November 2023
AuthorDean M. Drinkel |