Next in the Ancient Wonders author interview series: William Meikle!
Tell us a little about
yourself, and what you like to write?
I'm a Scottish writer. Around 1991 I started to submit
stories to the UK small press mags. It's been a slow but steady progression
from there. I now have over twenty five professional short story sales and have
fifteen novels published in genre presses.
I've been asked many times why I write what I do. I choose
to write mainly at the pulpy end of the market, populating my stories with
monsters, myths, men who like a drink and a smoke, and more monsters. People
who like this sort of thing like it.
I write to escape.
I grew up on a West of Scotland council estate and I spent a
lot of time alone or at my grandparent's house.
My granddad was housebound, and a voracious reader. I got
the habit from him, and through him I discovered the Pan Books of Horror and
Lovecraft, but I also discovered westerns, science fiction, war novels and the
likes of Mickey Spillane, Ed McBain, Alistair MacLean, Dennis Wheatley, Nigel
Tranter, Arthur C Clarke and Isaac Asimov. When you mix all that together with
DC Comics, Tarzan, Gerry Anderson and Dr Who then, later on, Hammer and
Universal movies on the BBC, you can see how the pulp became embedded in my
psyche.
I think you have to have grown up with pulp to get it. A lot
of writers have been told that pulp equals bad plotting and that you must have
deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been
told that pulp equals bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the
joy I got from early Moorcock, from Spillane and further back, A Merritt and H
Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan
Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would
sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.
I write to escape. I haven't managed it yet, but I'm working on it
What inspired you to
write “The Cauldron of Camulos”?
I've tried my hand at several works of fantasy over the
years, and they almost always come out the same way – pulpy, with swords,
sorcery, monsters and bloody battles to the fore. It's the way I roll.
I may start with good intentions, of writing high fantasy
with political intrigue and courtly goings on but, as in the Watchers series, Berserker and the Augustus
Seton stories, my inner barbarian muscles to the fore, says Bugger this for a lark, and starts hacking.
The blame for my enthusiasm can be laid squarely at several
doors. There's Conan, of course, and Elric, Corum, Hawkmoon and the whole
pantheon of Eternal Champions; there's Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Solomon
Kane, Jon Shannow, the princes of Amber and the shades of a thousand more from
the likes of Poul Anderson, A Merritt, Edgar Rice Burroughs, H Rider Haggard, Karl
Edward Wagner and many others
So, there's that, and a long standing fascination with
Arthur going way back to my childhood and reading The Sword in the Stone, Elidor and a big book of medieval romances
with exciting colourful prints of knights and damsels and dragons.
In "The Cauldron" I wanted to strip away the
medieval and go back to the Celtic and Saxon versions of the legends, although
I suspect Arthur and the Grail as archetypes go back even further than that.
If the TARDIS could
drop you off to any one site in its heyday, where would you go?
I'd love to see Orkney, during the mound-building, menhirs-raising
years. I'd love to see Maes Howe and the Ring of Brodgar going up and discover
why they were built as they were. Or Carnac in Brittany. I'd love to revisit it
while it was getting put up.
What appeals to you
most about ancient sites/landscapes?
I have a deep love of old places, in particular menhirs and
stone circles, and I’ve spent quite a lot of time travelling the UK and Europe
just to visit archaeological remains. I also love what is widely known as “weird
shit”. I’ve spent far too much time surfing and reading Fortean, paranormal and
cryptozoological websites. The cryptozoological stuff especially fascinates me,
and provides a direct stimulus for a lot of my fiction.
But there’s just something about the misty landscapes and
old places that speaks straight to my soul. Bloody Celts … we get all
sentimental at the least wee thing.
What do you have
coming out next?
Next up is a weird Sherlock Holmes collection, The Quality of Mercy and Other Stories from
a new imprint, Dark Renaissance. It's in deluxe limited edition hardcover and
trade paperback editions, with a dozen illustrations by Wayne Miller who has
previously done a lot of work on my covers for Dark Regions Press.
"When I first set out to document the casebook of my
good friend Sherlock Holmes, there were some cases I approached with a certain
degree of trepidation. Holmes has a public face as a man of strict rationality,
a stickler for method and observation. But Holmes himself has always been open
to more extreme possibilities."
In these pages you'll find, among other things, a Jade
pendant that bestows great power, a fiddle that holds the key to an ancient
secret, a lost overcoat that wants to return to its owner, and an encounter
with an old foe that imperils the whole of Great Britain. All of them are cases
that Holmes and Watson must solve, even if they have to open themselves to
extreme possibilities to do so.
[
William Meikle is a Scottish writer with fifteen novels
published and over 250 short story credits in thirteen countries. His work has
appeared in a number of anthologies; recent short stories were sold to
Nature Futures, Penumbra and
Daily Science Fiction. He now lives in a
remote corner of Newfoundland, Canada, with icebergs, whales and bald eagles
for company. In the winters he gets warm vicariously through the lives of
others in cyberspace.]
The
Alchemy Book of Ancient Wonders is available in paperback and ebook formats from multiple retailers - see the
anthology page here for linky links!
