Small but Mighty: Winter by Dan Grace

This instalment of Small but Mighty brings you Winter by Dan Grace, published by none other than Unsung Stories. The London based press are doing unpossible things with the short form and turning plenty of heads with this novella.

Welcome to SFFWorld, Dan, for those who haven’t found it yet, tell us a little about Winter, without quoting the publisher’s blurb.

So, plot-wise (without spoilers), Winter focusses on a group of friends and revolutionaries, Adam, Leila and May, holed up in a cabin in Scotland, having fled England following an uprising. There they run into a two more characters, Mikhail and Ingold, who are escaping the same events but for different reasons. A clash of worldviews ensues, complete with threats, imprisonment, snow (lots of snow) and some very strange goings on indeed. It encompasses folklore, revolutionary politics, magic and loss. So just about everything you could want from a novella really.

It all came out a chance encounter with a small group of deer on a snow-bound footpath, my own interest in less-than-orthodox politics and a mild obsession with the idea of the Green Man. I simply took these ingredients, mixed them together and voila! Winter was born. As I said, it’s a novella, 80 or so pages, so it can be read in a single sitting. In fact I’d go so far as to say its best read in a single sitting. Of course writing it was the easy part, I then had to find a home for a slipstream novella. Not the most marketable of things apparently. Luckily I came across the folk at Unsung Stories. They like weird stuff and wanted to do something with it. A short while later it was published as an ebook and I now get to go round telling people I’m a writer.

Winter, set in Scotland, against a backdrop of social unrest, war and …hang on, what’s Scotland done to end up being the best place to hide from the End of the World as we know it?

Ha! Well, when I started writing this (a long time ago now) Scots independence and the referendum was just beginning to be discussed seriously in the mainstream media. As I was writing, the likelihood of Scotland being the stable country compared to England seemed like a plausible future and one that might have some traction as a plot point. Not that I think, with sci-fi, there’s any necessity for things to be plausible in a practical sense. I was more looking for a resonance, a sense of something familiar, however undesirable it may be to some readers, to hang the story from. It gave me a place and a landscape to put the characters in and play out the stuff I had bouncing around my head and in my notebooks. That was about the extent of my ‘worldbuilding’ really. I’m not much of a one for planning or plotting. I like to get an idea of place, just some key elements, and then sit down and see where the story goes.

Also, I love Scotland. It’s beautiful. Go. Go now. If I had to hole up from the end of the world anywhere, it’d definitely be there.

Where did the spark for the Ukrainian, Mikhail, come from?

I enjoyed writing Mikhail a lot. Perhaps not quite as much as Ingold, but he was still good fun. He’s where the fantastical elements of the story begin to appear amongst the sci-fi, dystopian stuff. Originally I just wanted the characters that the main group encounter in the cabin to have a different perspective and motivation to be in the same place. So I thought about immigrant labour, the people who get treated abysmally now let alone when there’s major political upheaval, and wondered what their experience of this might be and how that might interact with this group. Then things took an odd turn and I ended up with a character that was far more central to the plot and asking slightly different questions to the ones I thought he might ask. I never really believed writers when they said that sort of thing happened in the process of writing, but it did for me.

Unsung is the home of the unusual and, in their words, secrets that should be told. Tell us a secret about you.

I have an incurable blind spot for apostrophes. I only really learnt how to use them properly when I was about 30. I still get it wrong with alarming regularity. Thanks goodness for editors…

Are you a Quiet Corner or A Con Commotion sort?

Probably more of a Quiet Corner type, tucked away with a pen, paper, pile of books and strong coffee.

What’s the funniest part of writing for you?

Funny peculiar or funny ha-ha?

For funny ha-ha I’d say writing group sessions. Pretty much the whole of Winter was work-shopped with a writing group I was involved with at the time. I can’t emphasise enough how important this was for my development as a writer. It made the book good and it made me laugh.

For funny peculiar I’d say the bit where I get some money for making something up. I still can’t quite get over that. It’s a weird idea for a job.

Who edited Winter, and who did the cover art?

Winter was edited by the awesome Unsung duo of George Sandison and Gary Budden. They killed many a darling and the final book was so much better for it. (Also, they both happen to be exceptional writers as well as editors, so go check their stuff out.)

The beautiful, minimalist cover art was created by Unsung’s designer Martin Cox.

What else are you working on?

I’m currently working on the follow up to Winter, Spring. It will hopefully be the second in a set of four novellas. No prizes for guessing the titles of the other two. I’m not going to say any more about it other than it will feature some of the characters as Winter. I’ve also got a couple of short stories in the pipeline which will hopefully see the light of day over the next year or so. Finally, I’ve been getting back into writing poetry again and I’m working on what will hopefully be a short pamphlet. So keeping myself busy.

For anyone who’d like to keep updated with what I’m up to (in minute and often tedious detail) please do follow me on Twitter and make me look popular.

And finally, before we let you free again, where can eager readers buy Winter?

The best way to buy Winter (for the bargain price of £1.99!) is as an epub or mobi direct from the publisher. If you’re a Kindle user you can also find Winter on Amazon. Or of course Google Play. Or indeed iBooks And all other good ebook retailers!

Enjoy!

Thanks Dan, couldn’t have said it better ourselves!

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