TONY RICHARDS

'Man, can this guy write. (He) has the power to introduce you all over again to the pleasures of reading good prose' - Ed Gorman

Postcards from Tony Richards

An Interview by Paul Kane

Tony Richards is a writer that every serious horror buff should be aware of, and many, no doubt, already are. Born in 1956 in Greenford, West London - to a completely non-artistic family - he has lived in various different areas of the city his whole life. His inaugural book, The Harvest Bride, was nominated for a Stoker award for best first novel and he is currently taking the small presses by storm with his new releases, including Postcards from Terri, a 35,000 word hardback novella from Sarob.

“I’d never considered writing to this length before,” says Tony, “but Robert Morgan - who runs Sarob - got in touch with me one day and said, ‘I’ve started publishing books of this length, how about you give one a go?’ So I went ‘okay’ and just sat down and the whole thing flowed from my fingertips like water. I found that length a terrific one to work to - all the passion and immediacy of writing a short story, yet with room to digress. And I’ve repeated the trick once already. Sarob are publishing my next, Under the Ice, at the beginning of 2005.”

So what exactly is Postcards…all about? “The plot concerns an unadventurous male scriptwriter whose best friend from college, Terri Campion, has travelled the world, been everywhere, done everything. Then she dies - and comes back to visit him in spirit form…Except she has an agenda. Essentially, the book is a kind of schizophrenic autobiography, taking in two separate sides of my own personality. There’s the bookish side, which sits at home writing and reading and thinking vaguely serious thoughts, which is the Steve character.

“And then,” he continues, “there’s - and I’d never claim to have done as much as Terri - the side of me which gives the other guy something to really write about. Which has seen a lot of the world and been in some interesting situations - all the way from travelling across the Militarised Zone in Nicaragua, mostly with army convoys, during the Sandinista-Contra war (I was writing it up for Tribune), to going across part of Africa, on my own, in a very cranky Land Rover one-ton truck, to hanging out with various jazz and indie bands - and met a lot of fascinating people along the way. A good number of the overseas scenes in the novel are based on my own experiences. I realised most of the 'schizo-autobiography' stuff in retrospect, naturally. The worst idea of all is to psychoanalyse your work while you’re writing it.” A good point.

In terms of genre writing, Tony has sold over forty short stories and has appeared in almost all the major markets. “My first sale was an sf story called ‘Out of an Ocean, Long Ago’, back when I was twenty one, to a long defunct anthology series called Space.” As mentioned, his first book The Harvest Bride garnered quite a bit of praise. “A second, Night Feast, appeared a few years later from Pan,” says Tony. “And there should have been a third, but the big horror slump hit just about then, Pan cut its genre list, and Hot Blood never appeared, despite reaching proof stage. As you can guess, I found that terribly frustrating.” Anybody in that position would, and a lot of people can empathise.

Moving on, I ask Tony who are his own personal literary heroes? “If we’re talking about dark-fantasy writers, then Bradbury, the extraordinary and much-missed Fritz Leiber, and I used to be a massive fan of Harlan Ellison, who influenced me very strongly in my early years.” What about outside of the genre? “Chandler - my first novel was Chandleresque - and Hammett, not simply because of his writing but because I find him admirable as a person; he actually had lived what he wrote about, and was a man of extremely strong principles. The real point about both these guys is that they managed to convince people a previously despised genre was actually worth reading. And - not at all PC these days, but to hell with it - Hemingway, who at his best was, I think, a true giant and capable of being incredibly moving. And I’m a huge admirer of Dorothy Parker too. There are a few touches of that kind of humour in Postcards from Terri. Oh, and did I forget to mention Steinbeck, arguably the greatest writer of the last century.”

So almost all of them were Americans who had their heydays between the Thirties and Fifties. What’s so appealing about this era? “Well,” he offers, “that was the period during which authors really began writing the same way that people talk, and that’s probably been the biggest influence on me of all.” This can certainly be seen in Tony’s work, where the characterisation and dialogue really rings true.

An extension of the last question, I suppose, would be what’s Tony’s favourite short story? “My favourite short story has got to be Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Scythe’ from ‘The October Country’, a classic and imaginative piece of Americana - kind of Steinbeck meets The Twilight Zone - which could comfortably hold its own in a collection of short fiction by American literary greats. Runner up? Harlan Ellison’s ‘Pretty Maggie Moneyeyes’, which is entirely about the people in it and people in general, and ends with a finale of incredible sad elegance.”

And his favourite novel? “No such thing. Favourite in what way?” he says, smiling. “Most entertaining? Funniest? Most serious? And serious in what way? I think Camus’ The Outsider is the most important novel I’ve ever read. And Poppy Brite’s Lost Souls knocked my socks off. But then so did The Old Man and the Sea and A Farewell to Arms. John O’Brien’s Leaving Las Vegas, the ending of which leaves the reader emotionally crippled? T.H. White’s The Once and Future King? Isherwood’s Goodbye to Berlin? The Grapes of Wrath? I don’t have a favourite novel - I’ve probably got dozens of them, all for different reasons.”

But what is it in his opinion that makes a good genre writer? “First and foremost, particularly in our genre, attention to prose style,” he tells me. “Horror has an unfair reputation for being badly-written junk. A book editor came back to me once with the comment ‘this is too well-written for a horror novel’, and how on earth are you supposed to respond to that, except perhaps with a length of two-by-four? - and writers who live up to that old stereotype sell the rest of us badly short. Secondly, a willingness to experiment with and stretch the boundaries of the genre - slipstream fiction I believe, is very crucial in this. Thirdly, though every genre writer turns out a few tales simply to entertain - and I’m certainly no exception - trying to say something important about the human condition, or simply trying to make the reader stop and think about something in a slightly different way, is vital if we’re ever going to stop being seen as a ‘despised’ genre.”

Now for something that a lot of people will want me to ask, how does Tony actually go about the business of writing himself? Does he plan out his books and stories in detail or does he write in a more ‘stream of consciousness’ way? “That’s an interestingly-timed question, because a couple of months back I was negotiating to write an ‘original novelisation’ - which means a new novel based on the characters and ideas of a previous film - and I ended up turning in a seven-page single-spaced treatment. Which is something I usually never do! I’ve actually lost work before through my inability to hand in a competent synopsis.” So how did he cope with it this time? “Well firstly, since the proposed book is based on a movie, I was able simply to visualise it as one. Secondly, it’s action-driven rather than character-driven, which I think is where the main problem arises.”

Because much of his work is character-driven, does this have an effect on how he writes? “I think so - I start with a basic idea and a person, and just see where it goes from there. That boring old cliché about ‘the character taking on a life of his own’ is absolutely true, to the chagrin of those of us who hate boring old clichés. So it’s very hard for me to plan ahead in the usual course of things. Sometimes I at least know what the ending is going to be, and work towards that. Sometimes I don’t. And sometimes I change my mind. What I was saying before about finding it hard to figure people out? That counts double for myself.”

What about the more social side of writing? Does he get out and about to conventions much and does he enjoy meeting other writers? “I’ve just the last couple of years started getting back into that scene, after a long absence. And yes, I usually have a great time and am very pleased to meet new people. As for writers specifically, that’s a bit like asking a plumber whether he likes meeting other plumbers. It depends on the person. I don’t feel automatically joined at the hip with someone because he or she happens to write. But I’ve made a few very good friends recently - bright, talented, quick-witted people - and finally getting together with Ramsey Campbell at Fantasycon was a genuine treat. He wrote the foreword for Postcards, incidentally.” Nice plug.

Okay, so what does the future have in store for Tony Richards? Does he have any major ambitions? Thinking about this for a second or so, he says, “My best wish would be - and I say this with all possible respect for the wonderful small presses who’ve continued to support us; they’ve been absolute lifesavers, and God (or whoever) bless them all - that this awful horror publishing slump would finally come to an end and I and writers like me could start getting our work out into the general market-place again.” Here, here. “Well, exactly. When I tell people who don’t understand what has happened over the past few years, they invariably go: ‘What, but there are scads of horror movies out there these days! Why aren’t the big publishers catching on to this?’ and that’s a bloody good question if ever I heard one.”

How about the more immediate future? What’s planned for 2004? “You mean, apart from this amazing interview?” he chuckles. “The obvious big thing at the moment is Postcards from Terri, followed up in early 2005 by my next short novel for Sarob, Under the Ice, based in Helsinki. I’ve got a clutch of new short stories due out from the better small-press magazines, Scheherazade and the like. Steve Jones is reprinting what I think is one of my best tales from the Eighties, ‘Our Lady of the Shadows’, in his Great Ghost Stories anthology. Cemetery Dance is publishing new fiction of mine, and hopefully Weird Tales and TTA will too. I’m trying to put together a much belated short-story collection. And I’m half way through my first full-length novel in years. So the buzzword for 2004 seems to be ‘busy’. As they say - whoever ‘they’ are - watch this space.”

Finally, I throw a little bit of a psychological curveball. If he were a novel, what title would he be? “Definitely WHAT’S GOING ON? Because, even at my age, I can rarely make much real cohesive sense of the world around me or why people behave the way they do,” Tony explains. “Maybe writing is my attempt to figure all that out. And maybe I keep on writing such a lot because I still haven’t succeeded. It bugs me something fierce, for instance, that genetic programming still seems to play such a huge role in the way that we react towards each other - haven’t we grown any cleverer than that, or are we trapped forever by the pack-dwelling animal inside us, with its hierarchies, silly mating rituals, and territorial aggression? It annoys me even worse that I’m probably no big exception.”

This interview first appeared in 2004 in Prism, the journal of the British Fantasy Society.

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