Author David A. Riley has had a highly accomplished literary career
spanning more than four decades. As a renowned editor and storied
creator of horror, science fiction and fantasy, he’s been putting pencil
to paper since the 1960s when authors actually still did that type of
thing.
Riley sold his first story, “The Lurkers in the Abyss,” to the
legendary Pan Books back in 1969. That piece has gone on to be chosen by
John Pelan as one of the best horror stories of the last century. In
2013, Riley’s “Lurkers” become the centerpiece of his long-awaited
collection of short stories. Released by Shadow Publishing and titled
The Lurkers in the Abyss and Other Tales of Terror, the collection continues to receive rave reviews from both readers and critics alike.
Online horror magazine
Hellnotes
describes the universe the Riley creates as one that is dangerously
unforgiving. “His universe does not care about you nor is it concerned
with whether you are a ‘good’ or ‘bad’ person or even what could be
considered ‘fair’ in life,” says
Hellnotes. ”Many
of the main characters in Riley’s fiction are people who are simply
going about their regular lives until something happens and suddenly
they have been marked by darkness.”
This is precisely the world that Riley creates in his haunting tale
of creeping evil “Scrap” that focuses on the lives of two
underprivileged young brothers trying to come to grips with some very
dark changes they accidentally set in motion on their new English
estate. “Scrap” is featured in the Bram Stoker Award-nominated anthology
from Grey Matter Press,
DARK VISIONS: A COLLECTION OF MODERN HORROR – VOLUME ONE.
We recently had the chance to sit down with David to get his take on
his writing, his world, what he likes to do in his precious spare time
and where he’s going next…
GMP: David, your career has spanned more than forty years. What would you say has been your greatest accomplishment?
DAR: It’s not something I have ever thought about,
writing being an ongoing thing, but if push came to shove I would
probably have to say that I think my greatest accomplishment in the
field of writing would have to be my novel,
The Return, which
was published last year by Blood Bound Books. It’s my most ambitious
project to date, one in which I invested a lot of time and effort.
Other than this, in my shorter fiction, that would have to be “Scrap” in
Dark Visions 1. One
reviewer said it “could easily have been a kitchen sink drama,
depicting the lives of two brothers growing up in a poverty-stricken
council estate in England. Riley chooses to inject a healthy dose of
horror, elevating his story to a different, altogether more gruesome
level.” This is exactly what I was aiming for in this story, which I
wanted to make as grittily realistic in its deprived setting as I
possibly could.
Of course I am also proud of my two collections of short stories,
His Own Mad Demons from Hazardous Press and
The Lurkers in the Abyss which
was brought out by Shadow Publishing a few months ago. I have had to
wait a long time to see any of my stories collected like this and it’s
been encouraging to see just how well received they’ve both been by
reviewers.
GMP: Are there any pieces you’ve published that you wish you could remove from your bibliography?
DAR: I can’t think of any published stories I would
want to remove from my bibliography. Most of these remain on the hard
drive of my computer awaiting more work on them or deletion. Though
there are one or two which might need revising before they are published
again, sometimes to improve the writing but mainly to alter some
descriptions which today don’t resonate as well as they did decades ago
in less politically correct days. Some, after all, go back to the 70s.
GMP: You are inspired by the work of H.P. Lovecraft. What is it about his work that speaks to you?
DAR: It is true Lovecraft has had a great influence
on me, as he has on many writers in the horror genre today, not so much
in terms of his writing style, but in his view of the absolute
impersonality of the universe. I certainly don’t aim to mimic the use of
the Cthulhu Mythos, though I did use elements of it in my novel,
hopefully in my own distinctive way.
GMP: Are there any other writers who you feel are an influence on you and your writing?
DAR: Many other writers have influenced me too,
including Robert Bloch, Ramsey Campbell, M. R. James, Ray Bradbury, so
on and so forth. It would be impossible to say where these influences
end. Every writer I read probably has an input. I have noticed that as
time goes by that my style has become more pared down from what it was
when I first started to write. At the same time, I hope I have started
to develop my own personal style, though that is for others to confirm,
not me.
GMP: You juggle being a writer, editor and reviewer along
with running a bookshop with your wife, Linden. What jobs have you held
outside of the literary realm?
DAR: My wife runs the bookshop. These days my main
task is packaging books that are ordered online and taking them to the
Post Office. My full time job is accounts manager for a firm of
solicitors (or lawyers, as you call them in the States). Before that I
spent twenty years working for British Aerospace, again in accounts,
with just a brief gap between when we published
Beyond magazine for three issues.
That was our attempt to set up a new professional fantasy and science
fiction magazine in 1995. We were distributed nationally throughout the
UK, publishing writers like Karl Wagner, John Brunner, Ramsey Campbell,
Stephen Gallagher, Stephen Laws, Kim Newman, etc. Unfortunately our
outgoings (printing costs, writers’ and artists’ fees, etc) outpaced our
income and eventually it folded.
GMP: Your story “Scrap” appears in our first anthology, DARK VISIONS: A COLLECTION OF MODERN HORROR – Volume One,
and was actually the first story we read that we knew we wanted
publish. What inspired you to write this story? Do you believe in an
existence after death?
DAR: I don’t know whether I believe in an existence
after death or not. I tend to feel that there isn’t, though Linden and I
do seem to share our house and bookshop with a ghost. A benign ghost, I
would add. Linden believes the spirit’s name is Emily and that she
sometimes helps out when we’re searching for a hard-to-find book. More
than a few times, after fruitlessly searching for one which has been
misplaced, my wife will ask Emily to help. And the next time we go into
the shop it will be there, often pulled out an inch or two from the rest
on the shelf. Whether this is a coincidence or not, I don’t know.
I’m not sensitive to such things, though Linden has sometimes
glimpsed a figure which may be our friendly ghost. I would add that our
house and shop is old, two centuries at least, probably more. It used to
be a baker’s long ago and in the cellars underneath there are the
remains of old ovens and bricked up doorways.
“Scrap” was inspired by a council estate in a nearby town and the
kinds of lives lived by some of the youngsters there. I also remember
when I was a kid sometimes taking scrap metal to a junkyard for some
extra spending money. The area in which the boys go foraging for metal
in “Scrap,” Grudge End, is one I have used several times in recent short
stories and figures quite a lot in my novel. It’s a bad place with a
worse history. The town in which Grudge End lies is based on an
amalgamation of several in Lancashire, old mill towns now in decline.
GMP: You went on holiday to Bulgaria this past fall. Do you
write while on vacation or is it a time for you to take a break from
everything?
DAR: I tend to do more reading while on holiday. I
rarely if ever manage to get any writing done, though I would love one
day to get my thoughts together to do something based on our time in
Bulgaria, where we own a couple of properties, including a large,
three-story house in a small village at the end of the Preslav
Mountains. Visible across the road from our top-floor balcony is the
village cemetery which lies near a wood, though I must admit neither
feel at all spooky.
Bulgaria is a fascinating country, much of which is like stepping
back in time, though it is modernizing fast. My preferred way of going
there is by car, which takes us through France, Belgium, Holland,
Germany, Austria, Hungary, Romania or Serbia and once, returning home a
different way, through Greece, Italy, Monaco and France. It’s a great
trip, during which we are never quite certain where we’ll be staying
overnight, which is one of the joys.
GMP: Can you tell us anything about any projects on which you are currently working?
DAR: I have a couple of projects to finish. I have completed about 80,000 words on a crime novel tentatively called
George and Glenda. Linden and I are also working on bringing out a paperback copy of Craig Herbertson’s short story collection
The Heaven Maker and Other Gruesome Tales. We published a hard cover edition of this book in 2012.
We are also looking into doing a couple of other books but it’s too
early to reveal any details yet. I have also completely revised a
fantasy novel I wrote called
Goblin Mire which was originally
published several years ago in the States by Renaissance Ebooks. I
wasn’t happy with the book, though, and cancelled my contract with them a
while ago, which is when I rewrote the book, shedding 10,000 words.
I am currently looking into either finding a new publisher for it or
bringing it out under our Parallel Universe Publications imprint along
with Craig’s book later this year. I am also putting together a third
collection of short stories, many of which have been published in the
Black Books of Horror as well as a few older ones that appeared in anthologies from Sphere Books and Corgi Books.
