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Terry Grimwood runs The Exaggerated Press and was responsible for 2016's Darker Battlefields of which The Darkest Battlefield is an unofficial sequel. Dean and Terry sat down and talked about Terry's contribution: Maria.
TG: The Great War fascinates me; Edwardian soldiers fighting in an apocalyptic landscape using weapons of fire and iron. Those ancient, rivet-studded tanks, titanic, steam-powered warships pounding each other to burning scrap and Zeppelins reigning destruction from the sky. The stuff of steampunk, only real and infinitely more horrible. I have always felt that there are entities that feed off war. I don’t mean supernatural ones, but, rather, underlying the horror and carnage there is something that gains sustenance and strength from it. Steve Byrne’s excellent Vietnam War novel Phoenix explores this theme and was a source of inspiration for Maria. This entity, is the much-vaunted military-industrial complex, I suppose. War can make people wealthy, it can sweep others up to positions of great power. It can also feed a nation’s sense of superiority. It can puff the chest and stir up patriotism and nationalism. I think that the physically beautiful creature who calls herself Maria is, in some ways, representative of that. She is a manifestation of war’s death-eaters. Look at the way Britannia herself is presented in many a propaganda poster from the First World War; the ugly face of xenophobic jingoism, the call to fight in a conflict that will earn the weapon makers untold wealth, the blood-sacrifice required to settle the squabbles of the royal families of Europe, all dressed-up as a fearsome but wholesome and beautiful woman. DD: For a historical story such as this – particularly as it is told (uniquely for this antho) from a German point of view did you have to do a lot of research – if so, was it just a case of going on ‘google’ or did you have to visit libraries, read primary sources, watch films etc etc? TG: In March 1918, the Germans launched their last great offensive. It was almost a success, the Allies were driven back and lost virtually everything they had gained in the previous four years. That offensive was swift, brutal and effective and saw the introduction of Stormtroopers and sub-machine guns. It was also the Germans’ last, desperate act (repeated twenty-seven years later in the Ardennes). I find that moment terrible and compelling. It is the fulcrum on which the outcome of the entire war is balanced. I had to make that offensive the pivotal moment of my story. As far as research went, I have spent a lifetime watching war documentaries and war films and read countless books on the subject, both fiction and fact. My paternal Grandfather was a machine-gunner in the conflict and although he told only a handful of stories from that time, oh, how I drank them in. I recently read All Quiet on the Western Front, which is, of course told from the German side and is a tract on the sheer futility of that war. I was further influenced by the 2016 BBC documentary about the Somme, which was a history of the battle told, in equal measure, from both sides and described the suffering of the German soldiers in the lead-up to the assault. Max Hastings’ superb Catastrophe, was, for me, the most vivid and coherent explanation of the conflict’s origins I have ever read. The devastating 2018 film version of Journey’s End is set during the March offensive and helped me to visualise the trenches and the horror. Then, of course, there is dear old Auntie Google. DD: What were your challenges when writing the story? TG: Keeping a sense of time and place. Putting little clues in to anchor it in Germany in the first decades of the twentieth century, the cigarettes they smoke, the newspapers read. Also, giving the main character enough motivation to commit the awful deeds he deems necessary without overdoing it, was tricky. Writing the battle scenes were another challenge. I don’t write about square-jawed heroes, or so-called “elite” forces. I find those characters and their stories dull and uninteresting. I wanted to show fear and madness, I wanted to show filth and horror, but without superlative, again walking the tightrope between purple-prose and bleakness. Returning to novels that have provided inspiration over the years, Sebastian Faulke’s spare, brutal and heart-wrenching account of the first day of The Somme in his magnificent novel, Birdsong is one of the best fictional descriptions of battle I have ever read. DD: While you were writing, did you ever feel as if you were one of the characters? Are there parts of it which are based on events in your own life? TG: I always feel I am the main character. Or rather, the main character is a piece of myself (which is why there are no square-jawed heroes!). Ernst’s dilemma, the choices he is forced to make resonate with me. Fortunately, I haven’t had to make any life-or-death decisions, but like everyone, I have been come upon forks in the road that lead to heartache or pain for myself or others, whichever path I choose. Like Ernst, I know loss, and specifically, the loss of a spouse. Guilt is in there, of course, particularly given my sadly lost, but previously earnest, religious faith. I am acutely aware that there are consequences to our actions and have been brought-up to face them. No one else is to blame! It probably feeds-in to the fact that many of my stories revolve around one Faustian pact or another, and the price that ultimately has to be paid. Read Des Lewis’s Real-Time Review of my collection The Exaggerated Man (even better read the book!) for the most forensic examination of the relationship between writer and story I have ever encountered. It was terrifying. DD: Do you have a specific writing style? Is there anything you find particularly challenging in your writing? TG: I think that the first time I became conscious of style, or a desire to cultivate one, was when I read John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath, for me, the greatest work of English language fiction ever written. Steinbeck achieved a poetic, deeply personal rhythm to his work which I sought to emulate, but of course, never could. Then I read The Stand by Stephen King and became a half-baked King impersonator. There is a similarity between King and Steinbeck. American through-and-through, intimate, vivid and capable of generating an intense emotional connection with the reader. The breakthrough came with my first published horror story, John, which appeared in the now-legendary Peeping Tom magazine back in the 1990s (it’s also in The Exaggerated Man). The style is curt, spare, and economical and as charged as I could make it, but always concerned with the character’s emotion and perception of events. That’s what I try to achieve. Challenging? Uh, writing. Seriously though, trying to say something different. DD: Which authors / what books influenced you do you think? If you had to choose, which writer could you consider a mentor? Who is your favourite author and what strikes you about their work? TG: The aforementioned Steinbeck and King are my mentors, there is no doubt about that. Books that influenced me, other than those also mentioned earlier…The Shining, for its relentless tension and vivid description of a man’s decent into madness. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier for its atmosphere and ability to hold its central mystery until its last Act. Night of the Hunter by Davis Grubb for its near-Biblical surrealism. Bob Shaw and Robert Silverberg for their brief yet always-entertaining science fiction novels that inspired me to write when I was a youngster, along with the psychedelic sword-and-sorcery of Michael Moorcock. The list is endless. So difficult to pin it down. Oh, and the first iteration of Star Trek, absolutely my first inspiration to write and a masterclass is economical yet highly imaginative story-telling. DD: What are your current projects? Can you share any of it with us? TG: As of this moment, I have a number of stories forthcoming, Laurel in the Black Room Manuscripts Vol 4 and Men of Renown, in Evil Faces, Dark Places Vol 2. My urban fantasy novella, Enuma Ellis is due out as a third of a three-novella volume titled Unholy Trinity (Hellbound Books). Eibonvale will be publishing a mini-collection of mine next year as part of their chapbook range. It’s called Affairs of a Cardio-Vascular Nature and features a handful of my more left-of-field stories. I have a science fiction novella at the publishers, fingers-crossed, and a science fiction novel I can’t place (definitely the publishers’ faults, it couldn’t possibly be mine!). And a non-genre novella called Joe is soon to be published by a certain Demain Publishing [that it is, that it is- Dean]. I write all the time, a short and a novella at the moment. As well as fiction, I have re-kindled my Exaggerated Review site. DD: With so much happening, do you ever suffer from writer’s block? TG: So far, not to the extent that I can’t get words onto a page, but knowledge that I am repeating myself can sometimes bring me to a shuddering halt. One of the reasons I have moved to science fiction of late is that I need a break from horror in order to explore fresh concepts and ideas. I also love writing non-genre fiction, which is a challenge because it removes the safety of a supernatural support on which to rest the narrative. Suddenly it is the human condition and not a monster that has to be overcome or made peace with. I do love a theme, however, because it helps focus my mind. A game played at a writers’ retreat many years ago was to pick up random passages and pictures cut from a pile of magazines and construct a story from them. I have begun doing that and the results are fascinating. Finally, discipline helps. I write almost every day, whether I feel like it or not. DD: Do you write an outline before every story you write or do you just go for it? TG: Not usually. I guess my incomprehensible first draft is my outline and plan. More often than not I have an idea and start writing. Usually it works, but sometimes it doesn’t and I either stop and try to construct a plan or I give up. If I make it to the end of a first draft, no, matter how awful it seems at the time, then that story will eventually be completed and turned into something decent - I hope. Some publishers’ open submission requirements might include a synopsis or plan and I have to admit, putting one together does make the actual writing of the story a little easier. DD: What is your favourite theme / genre to write about? Did you learn anything from writing this story – if so, what was it? TG: My default, and most-loved writing genre is horror. Then science fiction. But I’m open to any genre and try to explore as many different ones as I can. I’ve also written non-fiction, including a number of co-authored text books. It’s healthy for a writer to work outside their comfort zone. Though much maligned, and badly misrepresented by Hollywood, horror at its best enables you to explore raw human emotion. The monsters (I use the word carefully because a lot of modern horror doesn’t rely on the traditional monster) it presents are, to me, physical representations of our own fears and wishes; death, injury, everlasting life (good or bad), the dark, the stranger and the different. Horror could be viewed as a politically incorrect genre because many of its monsters are physically unpleasant and stories seem to equate ugliness and difference with evil. However, this can be forgiven because the things we fear are ugly and unpleasant to us. Horror isn’t saying that only the beautiful is good (Maria is beautiful but she is far from good). In its raw form, it is taking the fears and horrors of our minds and souls and saying this is what they look like to you, isn’t it, but they can be beaten. There is a stake you can drive through their hearts. Horror as therapy, I’ll be opening my consulting rooms in the New Year. Science fiction on the other hand, holds a mirror up to society, to the social and political. It gives you a means to say that if we follow that course, we could end up like this. I’m not so much interested in the grand space opera form. Again. Too many heroes. No, I’m talking Philip K Dick, Black Mirror, Atwood’s A Handmaid’s Tale, Orwell’s 1984, the first series of TV’s Humans and many more, unsung warnings of the consequences both of mankind’s folly and its genuine attempts to progress to a better place. My own novel, Bloody War, falls into the former category, what if everything you are told and are experiencing is a lie…Almost forgot…What I learned from writing this story is that I can dip into the past, into a world that is not my own but existed and should be represented as truthfully and authentically as possible. I have been there before, my play The Bayonet is set just after the Great War and that much-rejected novel opens in London in 1916. But Maria has given me the confidence to take on the past more frequently. DD: If you had to pitch your story to a film producer – how would it go (30 words or less). TG War requires sacrifice, but for Major Ernst Dreyer that sacrifice goes beyond patriotic duty. The life of his son depends on the blood shed in the mud of the battlefield. DD: If you were writing a synopsis for a newspaper / magazine article – how would it go (200 words or less). TG: Major Ernst Dreyer is just one more faceless infantryman fighting on the battlefields of France during the horrors of the Great War. He is a good soldier and, at heart, a man of principle. But he has a secret, a friend who first visited him in childhood and saved him from his violent and abusive father and has protected him and those he loves ever since. His protector is a beautiful and enigmatic woman who calls herself Maria. He loves her, and feels that she loves him. But her protection is conditional, paid for by the sacrifice of human life. Now, amidst the carnage of the Western Front, her hunger is growing and her demands are increasingly onerous. The life of Ernst’s ailing young son hangs in the balance and can only by be bought by the wilful shedding of blood. Sacrifices must be made, that go far beyond those expected of the patriotic soldier and Ernst must lay the lives of his own men on the altar of a father’s love. DD: What is something your readers might be surprised to find out about you? TG: I was born in Suffolk and when I was a kid, earned my spending money working on a pig farm. Pigs are okay, but I learned to hate farms and farm-work and that is why I never have, and never will, work on a farm again. DD: Thanks Terry for your time, it was very much appreciated - and of course for kicking all this off two years ago with Darker Battlefields and allowing us to play in your sandpit again!!!! Please find more about Terry at:Exaggerated Reviews: https://exaggeratedpress.weebly.com/reviews.html Wordland Magazine: https://wordlandhome.weebly.com/index.html theEXAGGERATEDpress: https://exaggeratedpress.weebly.com/index.html FB: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/terry.grimwood.9
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CategoriesArchives
November 2023
AuthorDean M. Drinkel |