pornokitsch

PK Interview: Paul Kane (Part 1)

At SFX Weekender, the Pornokitsch team had the good fortune of meeting Paul Kane, author of Arrowhead and Broken Arrow. We pounced on the opportunity and signed up him for an interview. Mr Kane received a shopping list of questions from us, and, demonstrating Herculean patience, answered all of them.

What follows is part one of our three part interview. We'll be sharing it this week, so stick around to hear about projects past, present & future from one of the horror genre's leading lights (or should that be darknesses?).

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First stop - the Afterblight. You were given the entire post-apocalyptic world to choose from, and you decided to set your books in Nottingham! How'd this come about? 

Well, the previous novels in the Afterblight series – prior to mine – The Culled by Simon Spurrier and Kill or Cure by Rebecca Levene had covered parts of the US and the New Caribbean respectively; although The Culled does start off in Britain, it shifts very quickly to America. Scott Andrews’ School’s Out is set over here, but down South. 

So, I figured I’d write about the areas that I know, and what might have happened to them. I live in the Midlands, actually only about 20 minutes away from Nottingham, so I was able to include accurate details about the towns and cities surrounding it. 

Underground Reading: Maisie Dobbs and Birds of a Feather by Jacqueline Winspear

I'm an avid reader of the vintage tea cozy mystery, from the inspired puzzles of Agatha Christie to the quiet grace of GK Chesterton's books to the sublime "novels-with-detective-interruptions" of Dorothy L. Sayers (my all-time favorite author).  As prolific as many of those authors were, however, they just aren't writing any more books.  So I occasionally pick up modern tea cozies, in the great good hope that I might have found another author or series to help stretch out the time in between rereading Gaudy Night.

Jacqueline Winspear's Maisie Dobbs series has not proven to be such a stopgap.

Underground Reading: Dark Lord (Falconfar) by Ed Greenwood

Dark Lord (2007) is the first book in Ed Greenwood's Falconfar trilogy. Greenwood is the mind behind the seminal Forgotten Realms campaign world, as well as writing a billion or so (approximate count) books for that setting. 

Dark Lord, unsurprisingly, is a fairly standard high fantasy novel - good girls, bad wizards, a bit of prophecy and a bit of 'sucked out of the mundane world' thrown in for good measure. 

More surprisingly, Dark Lord is an absolutely ingenious pastiche of the modern fantasy genre.

That, or absolute shit. You be the judge.

Underground Reading: Rebel to Judgement by Anthony C. West

"Spring: I had been waiting for it since Christmas and that year it was late and hesitant, the wind avoiding the burgeoning south and lingering in the chilly houses of the north and east although the birds foretold the coming stature of the sun, larks singing day-long, the democratic rooks at parliament, but after the snowdrops and apart from winter grain learning to lean with the wind there were only celandines at flower in sheltered corners and along the feet of warm walls."

Thus begins Rebel to Judgement (1963) - with a paragraph-long opening sentence that skillfully avoids saying anything interesting.

Underground Reading: The Black Satin Jungle by Bart Frame

The Black Satin Jungle (1953) is a vaguely exotic behind-the-scenes expose of the fashion business. Originally titled "Indiscretions of a French Model", the book is heavy on the indiscretions and light on the modeling. 

Our heroine is Louise, a young, French woman who comes over the the US to marry her American soldier. Upon arrival, she discovers that the streets aren't paved with cheese - in fact, her husband is an ass and her in-laws are rude, drunk, smelly and perverted. The best of them - her brother-in-law - is a lazy blackmailer. 

Fortunately, Louise is a knockout. 

Underground Reading: Contract by Simon Spurrier

Contract (2007) is the story of Michael Point, who, by his own admission isn't particularly smart, funny or wise. However, Michael does have an impressively absent set of moral values - he's in it for the money. A talented social predator, he also understands how to make himself noticed or unnoticed, to get laid or to be ignored. 

His predatory cunning and mercenary ethics all add up to one profession: a hitman.

And he's very good at it.

In fact, Michael is so good at killing that he's been recruited by a mysterious group called "The Choir" to do a series of hits. The prize is immense, but they're high-profile and, more importantly, messy. The dead? They keep coming back. 

Underground Reading: The California Voodoo Game by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes

 On a personal note on the progression of time, I remember picking up my copy of The California Voodoo Game from the second-hand section of Rainy Day Books (Fairway, Kansas) and reading it while my mom was at work. I was, at most, 13. 

This was the first book I ever read in the Dream Park series - and it lead to some pretty wild speculation about my own future career. Somehow I parlayed my skills at math (awesome) and tennis (not so hot) to become a fearsome warrior the likes of which the world had never seen... 

Two decades later, I suck at math, Rainy Day Books is on Twitter and The California Voodoo Game is as wildly entertaining as ever.

Underground Reading: Captain Ironhand by Rosamund Marshall

Captain Ironhand (1957) is a not-so-dashing, not-so-thrilling adventure of the high seas. Set in 1772, Captain Ironhand features James Challoner - a faux pirate - and Lady Artis Grantley - a faux heroine. 

The book starts with Challoner out of work and out of sorts. He's a Navy man, but false accusations of rape from a sex-starved Countess had him stripped of his commission (reader, please note, "women = bitches"). His luck changes when a patriotic coalition of Lords, Admirals and Christian businessmen select him to lead a mission of Great, Manly Daring.

Underground Reading: Purple & Black by KJ Parker

KJ Parker might as well change his/her pen name to "The Enigmatic". Not only do the official blurbs refer to the author in this fashion, but virtually every review does the same. "KJ Parker" is a pseudonym (supposedly of someone that's already famous in another genre), but the cryptic reputation is reinforced by his/her chosen stylistic territory.

Parker, as I've pretentiously noted in the past, writes epic fantasy with the tone and flair of the great existentialists. Imagine Camus (beret / chain-smoking / small coffee / derisive look) secretly going home and reading Tolkien under the covers. The closest modern comparison is Andrzej Sapkowski, who also lends a certain stark & philosophical bent to his work. (Although the 'stark' could be the result of the translations).

Purple and Black is a limited edition novella from Subterranean Press, who have defied the 2009 malaise by putting out some stonking short fiction over the past 12 months. 

Underground Reading: Dead Till Dawn by Charlaine Harris

Yesterday I read Charlaine Harris' Dead till Dawn, the book that the HBO series True Blood is based on.  I liked it at first, but as it went on it turned into just another 'romantic thriller with a possessive vampire love interest' novel.  There seem to be quite a lot of those around these days.  

I got bored with it by the end and probably won't read any more in the series.  The fairly promising premise is that a telepathic waitress gets involved with a vampire because he's the only person who's mind she can't read, but the novel rapidly devolves into a routine - and mediocre - romantic thriller.