Dark and Whimsical: An Author Interview with C.J. Waller

I am delighted to be able to introduce fellow author and Mistress of Madness, C J Waller, who has kindly agreed to grace my blog with an author interview.  C J is the author of the Lovecraftian novella ‘Black Smokers’ and the bestselling novel ‘Predator X’. Her most recent release ‘Nine Eyes’, has more than a few of us readers wondering just how her mind works … and if we can possibly have a slice of her brain to duplicate and ingest in the hopes of gaining some of her powers. Since she is clearly in with the dark gods, it probably isn’t a good idea to make this last request, so without further ado – C J Waller everyone!

 Describe yourself in seven words:

Short, round, ginger, neurotic, curious, artistic, emotional.

Jeeeeesus (no, not him!), you like to start with all the hard questions. Ironically, none of Lovecraft’s. Lovecraft’s strength was in his ideas about reality, not his characterisation. I find I am more drawn to ideas than characters, if I am honest. Mark Z. Danielewski’s The House of Leaves sums this up perfectly – the characters were all assholes of the first order, but the house, and what was going on in the house, is what absolutely captivated me. But since this is about characters: off the top of my head and without going upstairs to look at my bookcase… it’s a toss up between Sam Vimes and Granny Weatherwax from the Discworld. Both immensely strong characters, written with tact and finesse. Also, the Monster from Frankenstein, who manages to sum up perfectly what it is to be human without actually being human. His infinite love and infinite cruelty is something we see every single day around us. Even though that book was written about 8 million years ago, it is still relevant today.

In my published works, probably Mags. She’s the electrician in Nine Eyes, and she was the first character to turn up in my head after Paul and Decker. She felt a very honest character to write. It was fun to torture her, too.

In Predator X, it has to be Yuri. To explore that far down the rabbit hole and write someone who’s gone completely and unreservedly nuts… that was a hell of a lot of fun.

In my unpublished works, Kailas.  He’s the quintessential tall, dark and screwed-up warrior.  He’s also pretty much my ideal man. I like going back to him.

My husband doesn’t know this.

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve been drawn to this idea that reality is but a thin veil, and what’s actually out there is far more complex and terrifying than we could ever comprehend. I remember squishing my eyes shut against the palms of my hands and watching the pretty lights behind them (come on, we’ve all done it… and if you haven’t, give it a go! It’s a trip!) – and once, I was absolutely positive I saw a map. I think I was about 9 or so. Then I read stuff like Erich Von Daniken, and my mind was blown… THERE IS STUFF GOING ON THAT NO ONE CAN EXPLAIN!! I loved that – the whole ‘World Of The Strange’ stuff. I remember trailing around after my Mum in the garden, boring the hell out of her with my childish ideas about God being an astronaut and how there were definitely aliens out there. Lovecraft followed soon after, and then I branched out to other stuff like Shaver (just don’t do what I did in my single minded desire to know everything about all things weird – please, for the love of everything dark and unholy, don’t google Dick Shaver. Just don’t. I did. It didn’t go well). Then I discovered stuff like Chaos Magick and even some aspects of Physics (the idea of dimonsions and interdimensionality, that what we perceive is only a very small part of the actual universe and that it is stranger than anything we ever imagined etc), which is kind of funny since I can’t count – but the ideas fascinate me. When there’s stuff like that going on around us, I can’t help but wonder why anyone would want to explore everyday, mundane things. I am Sadie Decker (the antagonist from Nine Eyes). I want to know. And if I can’t know, then I am going to imagine it, to the best of my ability.

I always handwrite my first draft. I’m very lucky that a friend of mine is a touch typist with time on her hands (hello, Jane!), and she types up my scrawl as I go along. I find thinking and typing hard – I much prefer the feel of a pen and the ability to scribble all over the page. I have whole notebooks of random ideas (“Yes! Poisonous cats!”), and big A3 pages covered in brainstorms. As for my ideas giving me peace… they don’t. I am that woman who mutters to herself as she walks down the road. I haven’t had a day in my life in which I haven’t explored at least one made-up scene in my head.

That moment, usually around chapter 4, when the initial steam has worn off and you’ve yet to hit your stride is hard. And that moment of utter helplessness when you look at your mess of a first draft and think ‘Oh, God… how am I supposed to deal with this? It’s hopeless!’

I love that point when you’re immersed in a story, and you know exactly where you’re going with it, and you’re finding out about your characters and they are totally playing ball with you… that’s when a story is at its most pure, at its most raw and honest. It belongs to you, and you alone, and it’s a wonderful, intimate moment. Yes, it’s messy, and yes, the writing is functionally crap, but that relationship… once your book is out there, it’s gone. You will never get that back. It belongs to other people (for good or for bad); they own it now. You have to step back graciously and let them form relationships with those characters. They aren’t yours any more.

What is it with all the hard questions, eh?! I find that most ‘mainstream’ monsters actually define humans (they tend to triumph over them in some way, or in the case of vampires, break them completely and turn them into boyfiriends), which is why I think I’m drawn to ones humanity simply can’t beat. I like bleak. Humans are pretty much up themselves most of the time, thinking we’re the bee’s knees and the very pinnacle of evolution, but we’re not – and I think having these huge, unfeeling beings (monsters, if you will) that basically treat us the same way we treat gnats is very important – and very scary. It’s one of the central ideas in Cosmic Horror. We are not All That. We are very far from All That. Now, it might not be a tentacled monster from beyond time that breaks us, but it will happen – it’s inevitable.

Which I don’t think answers the question, but uh, yeah. Sorry!

Without a doubt, the late (sob!) great Terry Pratchett. That man was amazing. The worlds he created, the humour in which he presented them and the unforgiving mirror he held up to our own world… the man was/is a legend. Also, Clive Barker. He taught me that the grotesque can also be beautiful. If you haven’t already, read Weaveworld. Immacolata is both terrifying and completely seductive, but also vulnerable – a great character. Lovecraft introduced me to the wonderful world of adjectives (and the Word Cloud cured me of the dire case of adjectivitis I caught from him). And Robert Rankin to the complete absurd. Plus, Neil Gaiman. I met him just before Black Smokers was released (my novella), and I told him about my dreams to be a writer. He said to follow them, but to be honest about it. Then I told him I had a novella coming out and a 3 book indie deal, and he just smiled and said ‘it sounds to me as if you’ve already made it’. Then he wrote ‘Keep making wonderful mistakes’ in my copy of ‘Make Good Art’. I look at that when it all gets a bit much. Keep making wonderful mistakes. What a great piece of advice.

I have no idea what I am doing half the time, and I live my entire life in fear of Being Asked Questions Later and people finding out that I am just crossing my fingers and winging it.

Anything silly, filthy or sarcastic. Our Friday night roleplaying sessions. Seriously, they are the best fun ever – 6 people round a table, taking the mick out of each other for 5 hours whilst pretending to be elves and dwarves (or, in our case, half orcs and tieflings. Elves get a lot of flak in our sessions. Everyone starts off playing elves because they are pretty and noble, but you soon learn it is much more fun to play a stupid half orc, or a crusty dwarf – or, in my case, a tiefling rogue with a charisma of 8. She ain’t pretty, and she swears like a docker. I like that). Oh, and Kevin Eldon’s clone in the BBC comedy ‘Hyperdrive’. “I punched a snail once”. Classic.

The usual stuff: ignorant people hating on things because they don’t understand them; the inherent bigotry present in our political classes; people who can’t leave their phones alone for 5 minutes. Seriously, you’re not that important. No one is that important. Put the damn thing down and enjoy yourself for a change. Enjoy the moment for what it is and not for the bragging rights you get on social media afterwards.

That’s like asking me to choose one chocolate from the tin! Okay, the pliosaurs. Why? LOOK AT THEM! Seriously, go google Liopleurodon. Who would not want to see that in the flesh? Simply awesome. And they were real! Imagine that swimming around in our oceans. Forget whale watching – I’d be pliosaur watching (if I wasn’t terrified it would probably just eat the boat).

Probably my Necromomicon: The Collective Works of HP Lovecraft, with a copy of Good Omens by Pratchett / Gaiman hidden in the back cover. Unless I can shove everything Terry Pratchett wrote into one big compendium and haul it around on a trailer behind me (but I think that might be cheating).

Right now, I’m planning a sequel to Predator X whilst finishing up a rewrite for a contemporary YA reimagining of The Island of Dr Moreau called (tentatively, because I change the titles of my books more often than I change my knickers) Chimera. Which makes me sound all arty-farty and like I know what I’m doing. (I don’t.)

To keep on writing? Is that an answer? I have so many stories rattling around up there – some horror, some fantasy, even a Cyberpunk one – I wish someone would invent an ideas-scoop so I could get them all out easily and splatter them across the page (I envision said scoop would look like a pimped-up ice cream scoop that you totally jam into your head and have a good wiggle around, collecting up all the ideas before you literally chuck them at a blank canvas). I also want to get Dragonsoul, my fantasy novel, published at some point. Mainly because I’ve devoted 6 bloody years of my life to it, but also because everyone deserves Kailas in their life. Obviously, I’d like the usual stuff, too – to secure an agent and have a crack at the Big 5 – but writing genre fiction in the UK kind of restricts you in that – more agents actively say ‘no SFF/Horror’ that specifically say they represent it, which is a bit demoralising. But that’s where independent presses come in.

If I can do it, anyone can. I’m serious. I’m nothing special. Most writers aren’t – most of them were just in the right place at the right time. And all that bollocks about thick skins and not giving a crap about what anyone says? I’m not sure that’s helpful. We writers tend to be a bit fragile by nature, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I felt a failure for ages because I couldn’t develop that ‘I don’t care what you think’ attitude. I have a famously thin skin and am horribly neurotic about everything (to this day, I avoid Goodreads, because that place terrifies me. It’s just so *huge*…), but it hasn’t stopped me. Let the criticism hurt – but never, ever dismiss it. Yes, you have to learn to filter, otherwise you’ll end up writing for others and not for yourself, but keep an open mind at all times. Keep working, keep honing, keep polishing. And never surrender. Never give up. Ever.

It was a risk, given I knew it might divide audiences, but the two main protagonists are in a gay relationship. The concept wasn’t conceived that way, and I didn’t do it to be hip or up my Right On quota, but was simply a matter of the two main characters, Paul and Decker, arriving in my head, hand in hand, telling me they were a couple. I literally couldn’t have written that central relationship any other way – for me, the dynamic just worked. I know there will be people who have an issue with that, but that’s their problem. Life is a broad canvas, and books, no matter what their genre, should represent that.

It’s also a story about family. There’s tragedy in there. What happened to Decker, and to his father – coming up with that stuff (and being a mother of two young kids) was sometimes hard. I’m not ashamed to admit I cried when I wrote some of it. It’s not all interdimensional beasties from beyond time and space.

So there you have it. A sneak peek at C J Waller’s pictureque but probably quite scary inner landscape. Thank you C J!

Nine Eyes  is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com – grab your copy today; you’re in for a dark treat. If you haven’t already, why not try Predator X while you’re at it? 😉

You can follow C J on twitter  @ADarkWhimsy

Or check out her Blog

Or connect with her on Facebook

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