Monthly Archives: February 2024

(British Novelist and Short Story Author in

Horror, Supernatural, Fantasy)

“One way to avoid what has already been done is to be true to yourself.”
― Ramsey Campbell

The Great Short Fiction of Ramsey Campbell

Stephen King on Ramsey Campbell:

“You can’t find a better introduction to Campbell’s work than this attractive collection of 39 tales spanning 30 years, with photomontage illustrations by the award-winning J. K. Potter. Modern paranoia and identity confusion, wasted urban landscapes, surreal transitions between inner fears and real-life horrors–all in a terrifyingly enigmatic style.”  Alone With Horrors won both the Bram Stoker Award and the World Fantasy Award.

The Hungry Moon is said to be Ramsey’s most popular novel.

Ramsey Campbell has published 37 novels, along with hundreds of short stories, two collections of  nonfiction, and has edited volumes of new and classic horror fiction. He is known as the leading horror writer of our generation and as the UK’s Stephen King.

His awards are extensive: three Bram Stoker Awards, four World Fantasy Awards, ten British Fantasy Awards, and the Horror Writers’ Association’s Lifetime Achievement Award.

“Future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood.” S. T. Joshi.

His most recent novels are The Wise Friend (2020), Somebody’s Voice (2021), Fellstones (2022), The Lonely Lands (2023).

A Collection of Short Stories

Here is my interview, a 5-question Q&A with Ramsey Campbell. Thank you, Ramsey, for this peek inside your writing process and insights into your fiction. Delightful!

1. Let’s talk about occult phenomena in fiction. What is the skill in making the elements of the occult or any supernatural power realistic and believable?

I don’t know if realistic is the word. I think everything else in the tale should be—the characters, their behaviour and responses to the uncanny elements, their motivations, the setting and so forth—but for me all this has become instinctive, and the same is true of how I depict the fantastic aspects of a story. Part of the process of writing for me is sorting out what convinces me from what doesn’t, which often means that an idea I’ve composed sketchily to be developed in the next writing session no longer persuades me when I come to write it. When it comes to the uncanny, whether spectral or monstrous or cosmic, the only criterion I have is that it must engage my imagination (but then that’s true of all my writing). Presumably that creates a form of verisimilitude; at least, I hope so, and hope it engages the reader’s imagination as well as mine. In general I try not to explain too much—for me an enigma can be more satisfying and certainly more stimulating than any explanation—but try to make the fantastic aspect of the tale consistent within itself.

2. In terms of the imagination of storytelling, where do your stories come from? By this I mean, how are the stories revealed? Are the stories embodied within yourself and come forth, or do you feel that your stories come to you from outside sources, like a ghostly presence or muse telling you the story?

It’s my subconscious at work, and I try not to get in its way. Often I simply look again at some mundane occurrence or item I’ve taken for granted for years if not decades, and my brain suddenly asks what if…? For instance, most people would wave at someone waving from a passing boat, but suppose whatever’s there takes the response as an invitation? I just wrote that tale. Then again, I couldn’t tell you how frequently I’ve reflected that there must be a story in some everyday item or incident and noted it in one of my workbooks to be developed (as happened in the case I’ve just cited). Such ideas may slumber on the page for years and suggest nothing further until one day they do. But apart from these seeds of stories, it all comes from within.

3. Let’s talk about writing horror. Do your characters know the story’s mystery (elements and action) and reveal them to you? If so, are you surprised, and do you honor that activity? What brings the story together at the finish: you as the author, the plot structures, or the characters?

Generally speaking, the characters know less than the audience, who may watch them progressing towards their fate, an experience (by no means the only one) that horror shares with comedy and tragedy. My aim every day is to surprise myself by writing something I didn’t expect to write. Codas—especially in a novel, it’s the logic of the characters and the impetus the tale has gathered that resolves the story, often without my knowing how it will end until shortly before I arrive there. I don’t plot in advance but simply gather material until there’s enough to demand to be written.

4. When writing and you hit a wall or have a problem conflicting with the growing storyline or veer away from the story (moments where you say, “Oh no, this is wrong.”), how do you solve that problem?

Once I would have panicked or at least begun by panicking. These days I take the view that to see a problem is to be on the way to solving it. Hitting a creative wall—I walk away from my desk for a few minutes if the block is in the work in process, to let my subconscious relax a little and provide the material (which it pretty well always does). If it’s in the development process I tend to mull the issue gently but often, and in time the solution presents itself.

5. Have you ever encountered a ghost? If not, do you want to?

I’ve had quite a few uncanny experiences, recounted in an essay (“The Nearest to a Ghost”). This was the most extreme, in the presumably haunted guest room next to my workroom. Some dismiss it as simple sleep paralysis.

Here it is with a bit of context.

I snore, perhaps not as much as I used to, given nightly applications of Snorodont or whatever the spray is called. For a while, until she told me not to, I tried to give Jenny nights off by sleeping in the by now famous room. One night I was drowsing, though by no means asleep, when something sat beside me on the bed, on the side towards the skylight. If we had pets I would have thought it was a kitten. I found the sensation interesting but unthreatening, and turned over, at which point it came and sat in front of me again. I was duly convinced of its presence but not alarmed, and went to sleep.

We’re almost at the unresolved finish. I’ve taken to following Jenny’s example and asking anything that’s there to keep the house safe whenever we go away. In the summer of 2004, on a sultry night before we left for Lesvos in the early morning, I looked half-naked into the room and made the request. As I turned away, something the size of an adult hand but no heavier than cobweb was laid on my bare shoulder. I found it reassuring on the whole.

Jenny and I had discussed befriending the room by spending the night up there together. During one of my attempts to let her sleep without my snoring I wakened at about two in the morning to discover that she’d decided to try the experiment. It was only when I opened my eyes and reached for her that I realised the silhouette next to me, its head on the other pillow, wasn’t Jenny. I tried for a very long time to move and cry out. Apparently I achieved the latter. In our bedroom on the floor below Jenny heard me make some kind of protest, but I’ve often exhorted her not to wake me if I’m having a nightmare, because I believe these dreams contain their own release mechanism, and I resent being taken out of them before the end. Jenny headed for the toilet on the middle floor, and when she returned I was still making the noise. Perhaps I was dreaming, in which case it had to be the longest nightmare, measured in objective time, that I’ve ever experienced. It consisted purely of lying in the bed I was actually in and trying to retreat from my companion. I admit to never having been so intensely terrified in my life. After minutes I found myself alone in the bed. I made myself turn over and close my eyes, but had a strong impression that a face was hovering very close to mine and waiting for me to look. Meanwhile, downstairs, Jenny felt an intruder sit beside her on our bed.

Chilling! I invite readers here to comment or post one of your own ghostly experiences. Thank you to all who share my love of  ghost stories.

Visit Ramsey’s website: https://knibbworld.com/campbell/

Ramsey’s most recent book, September 2023

Purchase link in UK: https://www.pspublishing.co.uk/six-stooges-and-counting-signed-hardcover-by-ramsey-campbell-6100-p.asp

Purchase link in US: https://www.amazon.com/Six-Stooges-Counting-Trade-Paperback/dp/1803943289/

On Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Lonely-Lands-Ramsey-Campbell-ebook/dp/B0BMM97W5D

Please join me in my reading nook and discover an author once a month on Mondays at Reading Fiction Blog!

Browse the Index of Authors’ Tales above to find over 300 free short stories by over 150 famous authors. Once a month I feature a FREE short story by contemporary or classic authors. Audios too. Follow my blog via email!