Kim Newman

Interviewed by Barry Forshaw

One of the brightest and most imaginative writers in Britain today, Kim Newman is a novelist beyond category. Horror, crime, noirish fantasy: all commingle in the heady brew that is his remarkable body of work. A CT encounter was overdue - and his much-acclaimed new novel, from Simon & Schuster, Life's Lottery, was the catalyst.

Hmmm....well, I'm less interested in categories than the notion of dealing in a new way with the subject matter of the so-called realist novel-the minutiae of everyday life. It's in the second person, which is one of those things you're not supposed to do, and you the reader get to live the life of a fairly ordinary bloke, following the various choices he makes or doesn't make. I suppose it's an experimental book, but I hope it's accessible to mainstream readers. There are strands of mystery, horror and science fiction, depending on whether you make realistic choices, but the heart of it is just the ordinary stuff.

What do you unwind with? What genres of fiction?

I'm quite widely read, not to mention being pretty well up on a great deal of cinema (which has certainly influenced my fiction as much as prose literature). As a teenager, I read a lot of H.P. Lovecraft and that style of horror; but I think the antidote to that was Raymond Chandler. Writers I especially admire include H.G. Wells, Stanley Ellin, Cornell Woolrich, Richard Condon, Philip Dick, Richard Matheson; and, from today, Ramsey Campbell, James Ellroy, Joe Lansdale, Paul McAuley, Dennis Etchison, Jonathan Coe, Tim Powers.

Any interesting juvenilia that's likely to see the light?

Aside from a few things written as a schoolboy which I probably don't have any more, there isn't any unpublished work. I started selling in my early 20s, and even the stories and novels that got initial rejections were eventually reworked and sold.

You're a pretty extreme writer...

Some people find some of my work extreme in violence and sex, but I think of myself as fairly trailing edge as far as these things go. Of my early works, Bad Dreams and Jago probably have more grue and explicit sex than I tend to do these days. I try to write what the story needs. I did do a novel called Orgy of the Blood Parasites, which was pretty much non-stop luridness; since then, the urge hasn't struck so often. I try to portray violence and sex in a realistic context, with as much emphasis on the emotional consequences as the acts themselves, which have all been overdescribed by so many writers that it's hard to think of a new way of getting them over. Sex scenes, especially, are hard to write, though I'm not especially afraid of tackling them.

Politics is certainly a presence in your work...left-of-centre?

Sometimes you have to stand back from your own opinions to write. Having been formed as a writer in the 80s, it's hard to get away from Margaret Thatcher; but that may well be the country's problem as much as mine.

Tell me a little about your working methods.

When I'm first-drafting a book, I try to get about 2000 words a day done, usually in the morning. I then have to fit in all the freelance stuff around that.

Your work is quite unlike anyone else's...

I don't really write the sort of thing everyone else does. I recognise others who work in similar fields to mine, but I do a lot of different things. People have said I'm an original writer, but this may just be perversity. I often reverse-think things: when tackling a subject, I imagine what the standard way of doing it would be and then go in another direction.

Your position as an influential writer on film - doesn't that get in the way of your fiction?

I'm certainly as influenced by film as literature, and I have an eclectic taste in music, which does indeed feed into the work. When writing stories or novels set within the last century, I dig out music appropriate to the time and place and play it while I work, whether it be the Velvet Underground for a story about New York and Andy Warhol, or Nino Rota for a story about Rome in 1959. Popular music is often associational, which helps. The manager of the shop where I buy CDs has remarked on the breadth of my interests.

Did you have a personal literary guru?

I had good teachers at school, college and university. I did a course called 'Late Victorian Revolt' at the University of Sussex which was taught by the poet Laurence Lerner and Wells' biographer Norman Mackenzie, and that has resonated in several novels-Jago, Anno Dracula, The Bloody Red Baron-and a non-fiction book, Millennium Movies.

How do you create a novel?

Usually the idea first (narrative hook, gimmick, premise, location), then the characters (in some of my books, the process is a lot like casting a movie as you think of who you need), then the plot.

You've stayed with the same publisher for your novels, if not for your film books.

As a novelist, I'm still with my first publisher (Simon & Schuster), though I've done other types of books for other houses. I'm happier with them than many of my writer friends are with their publishers. I did have the typical first-book nightmare, with a house that went out of business just after publishing the book, my non-fiction study Nightmare Movies.

How important is solitude to a writer?

I live alone, but in the middle of a city. I appreciate both solitude (writing really is something you have to do yourself) and society (without which, after all, there would be nothing to write about).

What can you tell me about your next book?

I'm currently writing a book called An English Ghost Story. Most of my recent books have been very complex, so I just want to do something about four people in a house.