We have talked to Paul Kane about his latest book, Sherlock Holmes and the Servants Of Hell.
Hello Paul, thanks for giving us some time here at SFFWorld. First of all can you tell us a bit about Sherlock Holmes and the Servants Of Hell?
An absolute pleasure, thanks for asking me. Servants of Hell is essentially a melding of the Sherlock Holmes and Hellraiser universes or, more accurately, a meeting in the middle. The story begins in 1895, with Holmes and Watson’s relationship under strain because of what happened at the Reichenbach Falls and their individual reactions to that. Holmes is putting himself in jeopardy by testing the limits of his endurance and Watson is naturally worried about his state of mind. It’s against this backdrop that a case crops up, that of missing person called Francis Cotton – who shut himself inside a room and simply vanished. The perfect locked room mystery, in actual fact, which the world’s greatest detective cannot resist. However, this is just the tip of the iceberg and investigating Cotton’s disappearance will eventually bring him into contact with ancient and powerful forces that fans of the Hellraiser mythos will already be familiar with: the Cenobites!
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s finest creation meets Clive Barker’s hell-bound mythos. How did you get the idea? Is this something you’ve always wanted to do?
I came to both the Holmes canon and Clive’s stories at around the same time, the latter first with Books of Blood and then The Hellbound Heart. Similarly, I was watching and enjoying Jeremy Brett’s run as Holmes on TV in the Granada adaptations at around the time I discovered the first couple of Hellraiser films. So, to me, they’ve always been kind of intertwined. You can’t look at the coolness and aloofness of Holmes and the Cenobites, in particular Pinhead, and not see parallels there. Plus, as one reviewer put it recently, Holmes is the world’s greatest puzzle-solver and the mysteries of Hell and its Servants, and especially the Lament Configuration, represent the world’s greatest puzzle. So, when you think about it, the pair should really go hand in glove. Years later, after writing my look at all the movies and comics – The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy – then putting together the fiction anthology with my better half Marie O’Regan, Hellbound Hearts, the notion began to surface once again. More seriously this time, I think, because I was in a better position to be able to broach the idea to Clive. It was also clear at that point there was a great appetite in general not just for Holmesian Horror, but Victorian horror – which has reached a pinnacle of late I think with novels such as Sarah Pinborough’s Mayhem and Murder, TV shows like Penny Dreadful and movies such as Brad Anderson’s Stonehearst Asylum or del Toro’s Crimson Peak. Couple that with the fact that the original setting for the period section of Hellraiser: Bloodline was meant to be in Jack the Ripper’s era and you start to see the possibilities of bringing the two together.
What is it you find so fascinating with Clive Barker’s Hellraiser universe?
I think initially it was just the sheer originality of the first story/film. Nobody had seen demons like the Cenobites before, nor had they been summoned by a puzzle box – it was usually via some kind of pentangle and an elaborate ritual. Here they were popping up against the backdrop of the everyday; quite a mundane setting of an ordinary house, and a couple’s dysfunctional marriage, where the wife is seeking more excitement by having an affair with her husband’s brother. It’s British New Wave territory, or later on soap opera land, but then here come these creatures from another dimension who dress in leather, can control chains and hooks that come out of nowhere and who thrive on the pleasure of pain. Although obviously it scared the crap out of me at the time – I was only in my early-mid-teens – I was also aware on some level of the whole beautiful horror thing. I mean, the birth of Frank is set to Chris Young’s fantastic waltz, for goodness sake. It was just such a contrast, and a breath of fresh air at a time when we were at saturation point with slashers and such. Then the comics and later movies showed us just how flexible the format was, that you could tell all kinds of different stories within the framework of that universe: a medieval take; a western; a noir with detectives and femme fatales… You could also have lots and lots of different Cenobites, with so many origin stories. Our anthology, Hellbound Hearts, proves this as well. I still say that a Netflix or Amazon anthology format show is the way forward with Hellraiser on the screen at the moment – the scope is quite literally endless. That appeals to me massively in terms of not only watching story, but also writing it.
I somehow feel that Sherlock Holmes is a more popular than ever. What do you think it is with Sherlock Homes that makes him such an ageless character?
I think you’re absolutely right, he’s definitely incredibly popular at the moment – there are two TV series, a big-budget movie franchise and countless books and graphic novels keeping the legend alive. And I think to some extent the same answer applies here, that he can be reinvented and the scope for different Holmes tales is only limited by the imagination. My publisher for the Hooded Man tales – Abaddon, also a division of Rebellion the same as Solaris – even released an anthology of parallel universe Holmes tales, edited by David Thomas Moore, which is the perfect example of this: Two Hundred and Twenty-One Baker Streets. Like Robin Hood or James Bond, Holmes is another one of those characters who thrives because he can be re-invented and other people’s versions only add to the whole.
You also write shorter fiction. How different do you find writing short stories and shorter fiction rather than novels? Do you have a preference and do you feel short stories leave more room to experiment?
I started off writing short stories, like many authors do, thinking they were a stepping stone to longer works – when in fact they are completely different disciplines and require very different mindsets and expertise. I think it was Stephen King who described the short as like a kiss and a novel as a full blown relationship… I couldn’t agree more. Shorts are certainly quicker to write, and I’m usually working on a few of these between longer projects, but I’m not sure they always leave more room for experimentation. A novel gives you a bit more space to breathe and is probably a little more forgiving if you make a small mistake or two – although you’ll have wasted a lot less time if you get to the end of a short story and realise it doesn’t work, than a 90,000 word book. At best you’d have to re-write it, at worst start again. These days I think I actually prefer something in-between, like a novelette or a novella. That, to me, is the perfect length to get your teeth into writing a story and also experiment. I’ve just written a post-apocalyptic novella for Horrific Tales called The Rot which is something of an experiment, but I’m hoping people will see what I was trying to do with the idea. I enjoyed writing it anyway; if enjoy is the right word to use for something that makes The Road seem like an uplifting, carefree little jaunt.
How involved are you in deciding the covers of your books? How important do you think the cover is in the buying process?
I’m usually shown the covers to my books, but it varies on whether I get a say in them or not. The final decision is usually the publishers’, really. I have to say I’ve been very lucky with my covers so far – Servants in particular I think is brilliant, but even that went backwards and forwards a few times and we got Clive’s input as well. And yes, I think it’s a very important part of the selling and buying process, especially when it comes to marketing. They say never judge a book by its cover, which is true, but it’s the first point of contact for any potential reader/buyer, so it needs to be eye-catching. When a book is first announced more often than not it’s the first thing people see before any other PR material, particularly in this age of online promotion and digital marketing, so its importance can never be ignored.
How do you structure a story? Do you heavily outline, loosely outline, pure discovery? What works best for you?
I outline longer pieces in a fair amount of detail, but start a short with only a rough idea of where I’m going – and sometimes only a concept. The more higher profile work I’ve done, the more I’ve found that publishers often ask for a very detailed outline or pitch with regards to a novel, sometimes even a chapter breakdown; probably because they’re paying you more money and taking a bigger risk. I’m happy to do that because it gives me a map to follow when I set off writing it, and also gives me a bit more confidence that I’m doing what the publisher wants. That’s not to say it won’t deviate here and there, but hopefully not by much if you’ve put in the legwork at the start. With Servants, for example, I did an extremely detailed synopsis and breakdown, plus a sample chapter, mainly for Clive to see and approve initially even before I showed it to a publisher to try and get interest. I wanted him to be happy with everything before I wrote it, even if that meant changing things – for the better, I have to say, like making the original clients ‘The Cottons’ instead of just another family who have crossed paths with Hell.
Have you ever struggled between what you would like to happen to a character and what you considered more sensible to occur? Can you tell us when and what did you do at last?
Ooh, that’s a tough one. There are characters I’ve grown very fond of that I’ve had to do horrible things to for the sake of the story – which really hurts as a writer. I struggled with that in my supernatural thriller The Gemini Factor, and as to whether certain characters should even survive at all. I really put the main protagonists through the wringer in that one, when actually I felt very sorry for them. But, of course, you do what’s best for the story as a whole in the end. The reader wouldn’t thank you for doing otherwise. In Servants, as well, there are turning points – where I had to decide whether or not to put characters into certain situations – but where it was for the good of the story, and made things more interesting, I just bit the bullet and got on with it. You can’t really do anything else as a writer.
How much energy do you put into your own marketing and promotion?
Quite a bit. I think you have to these days, no matter how hard the publisher is pushing a book. I’ve always done a lot of my own promotional work – because back in the day there was nobody organising it for me – and now I guess it just comes as second nature to help out with this kind of thing. I have a philosophy that you can never do too much marketing and promotion, but you can definitely do too little, which might make the difference between a book selling well or just okay, or even not at all. Fortunately with this one, not only has Rob Power at Rebellion been arranging things for me to do, I’ve also had a lot of approaches myself – which I actively encourage. I’m always happy to do an interview, a blog post or anything else… I started off in the writing biz twenty years ago doing journalism myself, after all.
What’s next? Do you have more new and exciting projects are you working on at the moment?
As well as The Rot, which is launching at this year’s FantasyCon in Scarborough at the end of September, I have my first comic out now through Hellbound Media, The Disease – with an introduction by Mark Miller and art by Pawel Kardis; that launched at HorrorCon UK recently. Coming in August from Abaddon is a mass market print edition of my Hood novella Flaming Arrow, included in the book The End of the End, and also a secret project from SST who published my novel Blood RED last year. That’s also Holmes-related, so watch this space. And I have a collection coming up that’s a ‘Best of…’ gathering together my favourite stories from the last twenty years; also from SST, that’s called Shadow Casting. There are a couple more projects ahead that I can’t really talk about, but people can always keep track of what I’m up to on my Shadow Writer website – www.shadow-writer.co.uk – and on Twitter, @PaulKaneShadow. I’ll also be out and about over the summer guesting at events – including Edge-Lit and the Dublin Ghost Story Festival – and doing signings, so you can catch up with me in the flesh as well if you like.
Paul Kane is the award-winning, bestselling author and editor of over sixty books – including the Arrowhead trilogy (gathered together in the sellout Hooded Man omnibus, revolving around a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood), Hellbound Hearts and Monsters. His non-fiction books include The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy and Voices in the Dark, and his genre journalism has appeared in the likes of SFX, Rue Morgue and DeathRay. His work has been optioned and adapted for the big and small screen, including for US network television, plus his latest novels are Lunar (set to be turned into a feature film), the Y.A. story The Rainbow Man (as P.B. Kane), the sequel to RED – Blood RED – and Sherlock Holmes and The Servants of Hell from Solaris. He lives in Derbyshire, UK, with his wife Marie O’Regan, his family and a black cat called Mina. Find out more at his site www.shadow-writer.co.uk which has featured Guest Writers such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Charlaine Harris, Dean Koontz and Guillermo del Toro.
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Interview by Dag Rambraut – SFFWorld.com © 2016
