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Have I Spilt Something
Down Myself or What?
Robert Neilson talks to Simon Clark
an Albedo One interview
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This interview was published in Albedo One issue 24.
photo Ben Lack
(c) Ross-Parry Picture Agency
Simon Clark (1958) is the author of highly regarded horror novels such as Nailed By The Heart, Blood Crazy, Vampyrrhic and The Fall. He is a prolific short story writer and has also written prose material for the internationally famous rock band U2.
Before becoming a full-time writer he held a variety of day jobs, that have involved strawberry picking, supermarket shelf stacking, office work, and scripting video promos.
More information about Simon Clark and his work van be found on his official website Nailed by the Heart.
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Robert Neilson: Tell me one amazing fact I don’t know about Simon Clark.
Simon Clark: Anxious. (Laughs) You’re anxious when the writing’s going well because you think it’s going too easily. I’m doing something wrong somewhere and then when it doesn’t seem to be going so well you’re anxious because it’s not going well and you know it’s not going well. At the moment I’m writing a book for Dorchester in the States called Stranger which is a horror novel set in the States and it’s going to be published in hardback next year and paperback the year after. That one’s just been a dream to write, it seems to have come so easily. You think, “There’s got to be something wrong here, this just can’t be right. It’s going so well, I’m so pleased with it, it’s like shooting out of me, I’m really enjoying writing it.” And when I came to read it back I thought it would be terrible. It seems so good, I’m just so pleased with it and I’m doing the edit and a lot of it needs no editing. Perhaps it’s the way I’ve written it. I’ve written it from the first person point of view so you don’t need literary turns of phrase. You’re writing the way somebody might talk or they’ll do their best to write down what happened to them, so it’s not requiring lots of changes yet.
RN: Have you written outside of your immediate background before?
SC: Not so much. Mainly I’ve written horror but I’ve also written a few crime stories.
RN: I meant geographically.
SC: No. The time seemed to be right to write a novel set in America. Dorchester are reprinting my earlier titles. Most of them are set in Britain, apart from one which is set in Greece. Then they gave me a contract for a new book. The reprints are going so well they said, “Simon can we have a new book from you, just for us.” And I think then they thought it was going to be set in America but it’s set three miles down the road from where I live in Yorkshire, a small village with a huge cemetery like Highgate Cemetery in London, so there’s a bit of artistic licence there. I basically moved Highgate Cemetery to this little village in South Yorkshire. Then they came back again and said it’s doing so well we’re really pleased with the reviews it’s been getting.
RN: What’s it called?
SC: Darkness Demands. There’s been a limited edition hardcover from Cemetery Dance. There’s been some really cracking reviews and that’s helped the paperback get into the shops in very big numbers and that should be officially published in the next few days. So they came back again and said, “Will you write a new novel for us, we’re launching a new hardcover line and yours will be one of the first.” So I said, “Sounds very nice.” So this one I thought I’ll set in America because over the past three years I’ve been on a few trips, so I’m getting to know the feel of the place. I’ll go for it this time, set it in New York State. I’m so pleased. But again there’s this anxiety, I’m setting a book in America. It won’t flow the same as the other ones. But I was surprised when I managed to break open that first paragraph and start writing, sitting back after a page or two thinking this is going well, it’s blasting out of me. I’m so pleased how it’s turned out.
RN: Is the central character American, The “I” character?
SC: Yes, it’s all American, the character, the location.
RN: Did you find it difficult to get the American speech rhythms?
SC: Again it took me by surprise how readily it came. It’s down to watching endless American TV programmes since I was about two years old. I’ve soaked up so much American TV and I’ve read so many American books it didn’t seem a problem. Somebody might come back and say don’t use this phrase. I’m hoping the editor at Dorchester, she’s American, will pick up anything that doesn’t sound quite right. But hopefully any problems like that will be tiny, tiny little ones.
RN: How detailed would the editor’s commentary be on what you have written?
SC: So far, touch wood, they’ve tended not to change that much in the book. It’s a case of wrestling the punctuation and the spellings into the house style as much as anything. It’s been so minor.
RN: Did you find that right from the start with your novels?
SC: Yes, I was really pleased. I had a brilliant editor with Nick Austin at Hodder and Stoughton and he said, “Feel free with what you want to write, don’t feel there are any barriers. Just write what you want.” And right from the word go he didn’t come back with many changes. Just one or two things he wasn’t clear about. He’d say, “What do you mean by this?” or “What happened to that character?” It would just be a case of dropping a sentence in. So really, the editorial changes have been minor.
RN: What led him to have the confidence to give you that leeway at an early stage?
SC: I certainly put off writing a novel for a long time. I’ve been writing short stories for years and years and I’d been working on Nailed by the Heart, that’s the first novel, for three years on and off. I think I’d probably paid my dues and done the apprenticeship. I’d been writing short stories for fifteen years before that.
I completed the first novel, sent it to an agent who liked it. She said, “We’ll tighten it up a little bit,” which she suggested some ways of doing. So I took it way and just basically shortened the length, compressed the story a little bit, took out some of the beautiful descriptions of scenery which she suggested I do. And then she moved to Australia, but by that time I’d already sent the novel back so I was waiting for weeks and weeks. I phoned the agency and they said, “This lady’s gone to Australia now.” So I said, “Can you send me the manuscript back.” I was so frustrated by the delays I shoved the carbon copy into an envelope and sent it to Hodder and Stoughton and it made it through the slush pile. I also included a few sample chapters and an outline of Blood Crazy and they bought that at the same time. Again I think it shows the confidence that they had in me to be able to buy not just one novel from an unknown but a second novel based upon a few sample chapters.
RN: Had he seen any of your short work around?
SC: I’d sent copies in and I suppose I was lucky as well. I’d written a few things in other genres, a couple of mainstream stories which had appeared on BBC Radio 4 which, certainly at the time, the Morning Story slot was considered very prestigious. I think that helped turn editorial heads. When I did go to meet the editor for the first time he took me to a café for a coffee, I thought it was just to chat about the books. But I realised it was like a job interview. He’s asking where I wanted to go with my writing. How interested was I in it. What were my aims? So I was saying I wanted to make this my career. I wanted to write a novel a year. Novels were my future. So it really fell into the pattern of job interview. I was telling him what I thought he wanted to know. Lots of big publishers want a novel a year from their authors, not just one really good novel one year and then a three year break. They want the novels to come year after year so they can do more with them.
RN: Your early fifteen years worth of short stories. Were they to disparate markets or to a few bankers you developed?
SC: They were mainly to horror titles. I’d written some mainstream stories which appeared on local radio and the rest of the stories appeared in small press, but then Year’s Best Horror in America started picking up the stories.
RN: How?
SC: Ah, that’s interesting. There’s a SF poet called Steve Sneyd and he read one of my short stories in BBR, Chris Reed’s magazine. He says you ought to send this to Carl Wagner in America, he edits the Year’s Best Horror. This is his address. I thought, this is a real waste of time, I’ll send it off and I’ll probably never hear another thing from it. It was this obscure address in North Carolina but I sent a copy of a story. He wrote back in a few months and said, “Yes, I’ll take it and I’ll pay fifty dollars on publication and you’ll get a copy of the book.” That was great. I carried the acceptance letter about in my pocket for about a week and kept pulling it out on the bus to read it, just to confirm that it had actually happened.
RN: Was that the biggest thing that had happened to you to that stage?
SC: It was, yes, because Tor published it and it was a mass market paperback and basically it was going all around North America, Canada, and a few of them came across to Europe as well. So that was certainly my first big splash and after that it became far easier to sell short stories. I’d write a letter to an editor and say, by the way I’ve just sold to the Year’s Best Horror and they would say, “Yes I’ll have it.” In fact one of the quickest acceptances came from the old Fear magazine. The first issue had just appeared about the time I got the acceptance from Year’s Best Horror so I thought I’ll send the story off and luckily I had one already completed. It was just a case of pushing it into an envelope and sending it off with a letter saying, Oh by the way… I sent it on the Thursday and on the Friday evening John Gilbert rung up and said, “I like this story and I’m going to buy it.” And I was so pleased because it was a glossy newsstand magazine and they were paying pretty well. I had a couple of appearances in Fear but then they hired a new fiction editor and I never got a look in after that. I don’t think he liked my work and I just got back the standard rejection slip. It just goes to show you think, yes, I’m reaching the stars and then you’re in the dirt again.
RN: When you see collections of stories by single authors and see where they’ve previously been published it always seems that 75% are to the same magazine or editor. You just find someone who likes you.
SC: I think that’s true. I had quite a few stories published by BBR. Chris Reed published my first book. That curiously… well, there was a lot of publicity.
RN: Was that ever picked up by a mainstream publisher?
SC: It wasn’t. One of the main problems with the thing was it was so short. It was about 30,000 words, barely that in fact. It needed a few more stories added to make it big enough for a professional publishing house to take on. But it opened so many doors. National newspapers picked up on the story and I was interviewed on the radio. It was nice to get that type of publicity and again that was something that helped open the door for me at Hodder and Stoughton. I sent along a copy of the book. The editor is saying to himself, “He got this type of publicity and newspaper clippings,” so I think perhaps one of the secrets of sending a novel to a big publishing house is not just to send the novel but to build in a lot more, send a good CV saying I’ve done all this. If you’ve got only one good clipping from a national newspaper use it. Staple it to the front of the letter. That’s going to be eye-catching. Because I think editors want to be persuaded. They want not just the novel selling to them but you as a writer selling to them, that you’re going to go out and promote the book, not just write one novel and say right I’m going to go and do something else. They make an investment on the first novel and they make a fairly biggish loss on the first one, a smaller loss on the second, break even on the third and make a profit on the fourth. And then hopefully the profits get bigger and bigger. So they want an author who is going to produce at least four novels to make a profit. And hopefully he’ll write a dozen novels and they can keep selling and build up the author’s name, gradually getting bigger and bigger and bigger. Which is I think what happened to Dick Laymon. I mean he was writing plenty of novels and they were selling but not in huge quantities, but because he was such a prolific writer. Every six months or so there was a new Dick Laymon title. So the Richard Laymon fans would go out and buy it and gradually the snowball effect built up until he was a really big selling author even though he’s never had a book in the best selling charts.
RN: He wrote under a pseudonym as well.
SC: I think he was so prolific that rather than flooding the market with all these Richard Laymon books they suggested he write some under a pseudonym and pretend to be this other horror author. I don’t think it lasted too long. As soon as he got big enough they were reprinted under his own name. I think it goes to show that you’ve got to keep writing the books but also you’ve got to sell yourself. It’s a whole package, not just a novel, the writer is part of that package, someone who will go out and sell the book is just so important. Publishers don’t have much in the way of promotional money for new writers. You tend to be lucky if they send out a few review copies. So it tends to be up to the writer to promote the book, write to local TV stations, radio stations, local press. You can get some good press coverage in your home town. You get to know the local newspaper editors and the people at radio stations and they keep asking you back. It’s just so useful to have that local fan base in your own home town. Gradually you just spread out to the whole country.
When I first started writing, when the first three novels came out, they were doing okay but I wasn’t getting an American deal or any translation sales and you get on the impatient side, but it takes a long time. You think, Oh well it’ll never happen but then I got published in Greece, Norway, Spain. Russia seemed especially keen on the horror novels. They’ve got the entire back list, publishing one every six months there. And then with the latest one which is a little bit different, Night of the Triffids, which is a follow on from Day of the Triffids, there’s been even more overseas sales and there’s an audio book.
RN: Has Night of the Triffids been treated like a franchise in that there’s already an audience there?
SC: I guess there’s a big ready-made audience who’ve had to wait fifty years to see the story continue. I hope some of them are still around. But it’s been one of these books, it’s been such a phenomenal seller, it’s never been out of print, all sorts of editions, limited editions, there’s going to be a new audio version. So it’s something that just keeps going and going. Day of the Triffids is such a famous book as well, outside the SF genre. Wheras Arthur C. Clark was happy to write SF for a SF audience John Wyndham was keen on breaking out, not just from SF, but from tales of imagination. He was aiming at a far wider audience than the people who read the popular novels of the day. It wasn’t a corny SF tale with laser beams and space ships. The idea was that Day of the Triffids would be this serious story about what might happen if ninety percent of the world was blinded and also there were killer walking plants. It could so easily have been a kind of schlocky, horror, SF space opera. The idea of people being struck blind and then plants setting out to get them, it could be one of the corniest stories ever told but John Wyndham had such a brilliant effervescent style that he could step out of the science fiction genre and he wrote in a very down-to-earth way. You read Day of the Triffids and it’s like your favourite uncle telling you a long anecdote with a cup of tea and crumpets by the fire. There’s not this sense of sitting down to read this big work of literature. It’s very easy going, a very humorous way of writing.
RN: If I may say, there’s a very British feel to it, in that it’s cosy, pipe and slippers, home counties. I’m sure J.G. Ballard would disagree but there’s a thread running through the work of English authors.
SC: His spaceships don’t arrive on the White House lawn, they arrive in a nice Somerset village with cricket being played on the green and the vicar coming for tea and a nice thatched pub. There again, it was probably the sort of environment it was set in that so many people would recognise. If he set a story on Pluto about this colony of women who are impregnated by extra-terrestrials, people would read it as the usual kind of SF genre tale. Like the Village of the Damned in the 1950’s but because he set it in an everyman kind of English village, I think he’s been a bit subversive, it’s set up the story you think it’s going to be quite a cosy story – a Miss Marple figure pedalling down the English High Street. Any second someone will pop out the French windows and say, “Anyone for Tennis”. And then he introduces some quietly savage and dark ideas. To go off on a tangent with the Midwich Cuckoos, there basically the idea seems to be that a genetically modified race of children are being born to Earth women. They pose a danger to the human race as we know it. So the argument there is should they kill these children even though they look just like any other child just because they’ve got these telepathic powers and they can read minds and reach into other peoples minds and make them do things they don’t want to do. It’s quite a dark story. Basically in a lot of Midwich Cuckoos the local people build up the courage to go out and kill their own children – quite a horrific and grisly idea.
RN: A difficult one to sell.
SC: Again Wyndham manages to write it in his light effervescent way with touches of humour here and there, so you’re not reading this doom-laden depressing book. You’re actually reading something quite light, something that makes you turn the pages. I think he was a master at doing that.
RN: Is Night of the Triffids your first venture into Science Fiction at novel length?
SC: It is. I’ve only had one SF story published, one that could be described as pure SF and that was in a children’s anthology of SF stories that came out a few years ago about aliens visiting this strange planet where they discover these androids and it turns out the androids are from a film and TV museum. It’s set a little while in the future. In a nutshell the alien teams up with Laurel and Hardy – they look talk and dress like Laurel and Hardy. They’re androids just there to perform little sketches in various club theatres where you can encounter Buster Keaton and the Simpsons as androids and you can see what your great grandfather was watching in his childhood. But the idea is that a lot of these theatres have been laid waste but these two androids are still functioning and the aliens crash land on Earth and they help in their own inimitable way. It was a nice story and I did enjoy writing it; I’m a big fan of Laurel and Hardy and to be able to put them into a story like this was so good. So that’s the only thing I’ve sold before professionally that could be described as SF. Then along came the idea of writing the continuation of the story of Day of the Triffids and it took me by surprise.
RN: What made you think of writing a sequel?
SC: I think one of the trigger events was I was going to an SFX party and I was travelling in this huge Inter City Express train, four hundred tons powering its way across the countryside and this little bird floated in front of it, caused so much damage the train had to stop. I looked around the carriage, passing the time waiting for the repairs to be made and I saw someone reading Day of the Triffids. I think it was the kind of thing John Wyndham would have appreciated because he was really obsessed with the fragility of society and civilization, that it didn’t require a lot to destabilize it.
So I was thinking along those lines, thinking about how he would have appreciated the idea of this bird stopping this big train. I was thinking a few days afterwards that it was a shame John Wyndham finished his novel when he did. Even when I first read it when I was about twelve it seemed to be getting more interesting when the hero and his family were retreating to the Isle of Wight to build this society of survivors, clear the Isle of Wight of Triffids and introduce their own laws, their own ways of doing things. I want to know how it’s going to end and what’s going to happen to the characters. It’s stayed with me for years and years perhaps even subconsciously I was turning over ideas, wondering what would happen.
And as soon as I thought, wouldn’t it be nice to continue the story. Pow! A story I wanted to write came into my mind and I could see how I could set the story 25 years in the future after the end of the original book. The new hero would be David Mason, Bill Mason’s son. And I’d get to describe what the society was like; it had become stagnant, very quiet, very peaceful. It wouldn’t be a back water but it was just this little bit of the British Empire that had survived by sheer chance. The population’s about 30,000. They’re building the new society, they have different ways of doing things from the old society. I thought that because the calamity was so great, so horrendous, that the survivors would begin to suppress the reality of what had happened and they’d try to continue life as it was as if the Great British Empire is still there. As if everything is hunky dory outside in the world, carry on living and they wouldn’t think about what was happening in the outside world.
The Triffids are basically rampaging over the planet. There’s a few societies here and there hanging on by the skin of their teeth, actually falling into anarchy themselves or the Triffids are breaking through their defences and killing them. So I wanted to create this cosy little island where nothing much happens; you see the horse and cart clip clopping down to the sea but then to introduce a shattering cosmic event which would shake people out of their stupor and wake them up. They’d go, “We’ve got to start working hard again, get a grip on things.” It was a real labour of love to write the book to explore what society might be like not 25 years after the collapse of civilization, but 25 years after the collapse of Fifties Britain. The internet never happens, Rock ‘n’ roll never happens. So you have this culture where there are some radical differences. The old gramophone record of Noel Coward to listen to or piano recitals in the village hall, a few glasses of beer. But then to have this event come which is so shattering you must go back out into the outside world and reconnect with it, embrace the disaster that has happened. Basically start fighting again, thinking we’re not going to just sit here and gradually just wither away and die out, we’re going to go back and re-conquer the world.
RN: Has this made you think of other what-if situations? SF plots.
SC: It took me by surprise in a way. When I was writing Night of the Triffids, for me I was just writing a novel, I was writing a story and I just wanted the story to be interesting and compelling, I didn’t really categorise it as SF. It just came out as SF. I just wanted to tell a good story and so in a way I’ve been taken by surprise now, thinking I’ve written a SF novel so now I’m a SF writer as well as a horror writer. I go into book-shops and see the book there on SF shelves and after the interest in Night of the Triffids I suppose it would be sheer madness not to write another SF novel. So yes I’ve been thinking of some ideas. Last thing I’d want to do is to jump on the sequels bandwagon. I think Triffids was a one off. If I do write another it will be purely a Simon Clark SF novel. I’ve been turning over some ideas and I’ll run them past the publisher before too long but I’ve got a contract to write another couple of horror novels so that will keep me busy for a little while yet. Someday I’d like to come back to SF.
RN: Looking at the way fashions change, there was a time when everything successful seemed to be horror but now it feels like 80% of everything is fantasy.
SC: Quite a few horror authors tend to write fantasy, tailoring the horror novels into dark fantasy and then moving to the fantasy shelves. I know a lot of writers who are writing a blend of horror and fantasy but I’m kind of hoping horror is making a comeback. It sems to be. There seems to be more interest in horror over the last six months. It first started in America and now it seems to be feeding through. I’ll keep my fingers crossed that it’s going to take off again. But of course the danger is if it becomes too popular a lot of horror novels will be appearing to meet the readers demands.
RN: It does seem to dilute the quality of what’s available. It certainly seems impossible to find a good fantasy novel without someone’s recommendation. There are so many because people are buying fantasy and it’s just being churned out. It’s good if you’re at the apex of the pyramid.
SC: Otherwise you’re just going to be another name in a big crowd. There must be so many big American publishers pushing out X number of titles per month, there must be so much fantasy being published it might not be that hard to get published but it would be difficult to get the work put into it to make sure it actually sells so you’ll get a chance to write a second book. I guess they’re trying the old publisher’s trick of spraying out countless horror fantasies and hope that two or three stick with the public.
RN: You mentioned America there again. How important is it to break the American market?
SC: It’s a big one. Again, it took a long time to break into it, getting on for five years and I got to the point where I thought perhaps the kinds of things I write don’t appeal to the American public. But when I went to my first world Horror Convention in Atlanta, which was also my first visit to America, about three years ago I was surprised. I went there thinking nobody’s going to know me so I’ll sit in a corner and sip a couple of beers and then go home again after a few days, but the moment I got there people were saying, “Oh, are you Simon Clark? I know you. I’ve got your books. Can I have my photograph taken with you.” I was so knocked out. It was just like coming home. You’re recognised and greeted so warmly, it just felt so good. And Don D’Auria, the horror editor of Dorchester Books… (I asked Simon to spell the name for me and we kind of lost the thread but…)
I think when he first introduced himself to me, it was one of those things, perhaps I’m fated like this but somebody I knew at the convention who had been across to Britain said “We’ll take you out for a meal.” So the convention hotel is such a distance away from downtown Atlanta the drive there took quite a while. I was scheduled to do a reading and we were coming back and everything was okay, plenty of time and then we hit a traffic jam. We’re stuck there and I saw the minutes crawling by and I thought people will be gathering there if anybody’s turned up. I should be doing my reading now. How far is it? Two miles. Eventually we get there. The reading’s scheduled for half an hour we get there at twenty eight minutes past the hour so there’s two minutes left so I just went in thinking everybody will be gone. But there’s loads of people sat there, patiently waiting. So I had to apologise, sorry I was stuck in a traffic jam. So I said, “Thank you for coming along, if you want any books signed or you’ve got anything to ask…?”
One of the people there was Don D’Auria. He’d sat patiently waiting half an hour for me to turn up. He introduced himself. What’s that name? I twigged what it was and he said I really like your work and what I want to do is publish you in the States. If anything I expected him to say you lazy devil. Again, he was so enthusiastic about the books, said, “I’ve read them and I loved them and I’ve been working on my bosses at Dorchester to make an offer on these books. I’m wanting to but I can’t just yet.” So I went away and waited for a nail biting couple of months and then he came through and said, “Yeah I’ve got the go-ahead to buy the first two books and publish them over here in paperback.” And it’s such a thrill. And again it’s back to your original question, “Tell me something you don’t know about Simon Clark,” and it’s anxiety. Because the anxiety starts you thinking, Oh now I’ve got an American publisher and the American readers, it’s a mass market, surely they won’t enjoy these books, they won’t transfer across the Atlantic. But yet again we got good reviews for Nailed by the Heart and it did sell extremely well and there was a lot of interest in it. Then Blood Crazy came out in paperback six months after that and it turned out to be one of the top five Amazon best selling horror novels. I was beating the likes of Koontz, King and Clive Barker so that was nice. I copied the page of the best sellers list. You can click on it and email it to people. So I sent this email page to all and sundry. I’m sure they’re sick of me. “Bloody Simon Clark, he’s bloody boasting.” But it’s such a great feeling to see it and to see it so high in the Amazon charts. It’s selling a lot of copies. There seems to be so much interest in the book. It seems to be one of these that’s really sort of connected with people on a deeper level you even can’t really appreciate.
RN: A lot of authors highlight the difference in the way convention crowds treat authors in America as opposed to Europe. How did you find this?
SC: It was a nice surprise. Just the sheer enthusiasm. As I said, I went to America expecting people not to know me. It was a little bit different for me from going to the British conventions, as the Yorkshire saying goes, “They knew me when I had nowt,” they knew me from when I was writing small press stories and just started to break into some professional sales. Like $50 for the Year’s Best Horror story. But when I went to America the fans only knew me through the books they had bought, they’d bought quite a few through import stores, must have cost a small fortune, but they’re so excited and enthusiastic it’s a bit mind blowing at first. You’d be walking down a hotel corridor and there’s someone walking towards you and you see them looking at you. “Have I spilt something down myself or what?” And they’re shouting from about a hundred yards, “Hey! Simon Clark.” And I say, “Yes.” “Can I get my photograph taken with you? Can I shake your hand? I read your last novel and it was wonderful. And I’m going into the dealer’s room now and I’m going to buy everything and get you to sign it.” There’s this big wash of enthusiasm but everyone is so warm and friendly as well. It was like coming home, like I belong here all along. I’ve been to other conventions since, I was guest of honour at Seattle a few weeks ago. They’re so enjoyable to do.
I remember going to conventions and coming away feeling great ‘cause two people had asked me to sign their books, books they had bought and I thought that was wonderful. And then I went to Seattle and all I did basically was sign books all day. How many I signed in the end I don’t know but I’d a mass signing session on the Saturday evening and there were queues of people stretching out. They’ve met me through the books in a sense, they’ve met me but I don’t know them. They’ve read perhaps four of my novels and I’m signing away. It’s such a good feeling, it’s exhilarating. It’s not a case of, “I’m not signing any more now, you can go away.” It’s, “Yes put them in front of me, I’ll sign them.” It’s a little bit of an ego trip really. I’ve done lean years of trying to get the novels sold and then promoting them, seeing nice but modest sales in the UK. Now the other titles are selling in places like Greece and Russia. I don’t know if they have horror conventions in Russia. But it would be something to go to see if you get that kind of response to it there.
My horror novels in Russia are out in Hardback. They look like a video, the feel and look of a video. I thought they’ve sent me a video, but it is a book, by someone called Simon Clark or the Russian equivalent of it. They sell for a dollar a piece. I was thinking, Does someone actually go along with a dollar bill to buy one of these or a couple of roubles or a bottle of vodka?
RN: So what are royalties like from Russia? Other writers have said that you can be the best SF author in Russia and you’re making 20 pence a year.
SC: Things have changed the last few years. Writers used to be paid in roubles which weren’t convertible currency outside of Russia so they’d have X million roubles sitting in a bank which you can do nothing with and every now and then you can go over to Russia and drag it all out and spend it on a slap up meal, McDonald’s maybe, it wouldn’t be worth much anyway. But lately with the economy opening up to the outside world they do pay an advance. My agent says, “Here’s your advance Simon but don’t expect another penny.
(c) 2004 Robert Neilson - Albedo One. All rights reserved
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