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  • Amy's Bookshelf Reviews

Featured Author: Mark Dillon


Q: In one sentence, tell me something that describes you as a person?

A: I've spent most my life with the Gatineau Hills of western Québec looming like storm clouds in the distance, or sloping under my feet, and they've inspired all of my writing.

Q: How many books have you written? How many of those are published?

A: In the 1970s and 1980s, I wrote several hundred short stories that were bad beyond belief; they were practice, nothing more, and they kept the woodstoves burning. By the 1990s, my writing had improved, and in 2003, Barbara Roden accepted "Who Would Remain" for the magazine, ALL HALLOWS. Soon after this, John Pelan accepted "Shadows in the Sunrise" for his DARKSIDE anthology. Since then, I've put out a few ebooks: one collection, two novellas.

Q: If you could “create” your own genre of what you write, what would you call your books?

A: Nightmare stories. I love the uncertainty of dreams, the way they dredge up memories I'd rather avoid, and shuffle everyday things like snow and starlight into something alien. When I write, I try to capture that shifting sense of ordinary life made strange.

Q: Tell me something about yourself that is separate from writing.

A: I bike a lot.

Q: Who is your favorite Author?

A: The people I've read the most, and who have had the most influence on the ways I think about writing, have included J. G. Ballard, Clark Ashton Smith, Mervyn Peake, H. G. Wells, L. P. Hartley, M. R. James, Sheridan Le Fanu, Walter de la Mare, Ambrose Bierce, Leigh Brackett, Avram Davidson, R. A. Lafferty, F. L. Lucas, Walter Kaufmann, C. L. Moore, Olaf Stapledon, Jean Lorrain, Ronald Firbank, Oscar Wilde, Marcel Brion, E. T. A. Hoffmann, Nigel Kneale, M. John Harrison, Bruno Schulz.

In recent years, I've read a lot by others, including John Keats, Isaac Babel, George Sterling, Leconte de Lisle, Anton Chekhov, John Cheever, Michel de Ghelderode, Robert Frost, Guy de Maupassant, Paul Bowles, William Sansom, Elizabeth Bowen, Sarah Orne Jewett; they've all forced me to reconsider what I do, and how I do it. I've written about this on my website.

Q: Without quoting your back cover synopsis, tell me about the last book you published.

A: I had just re-read several Jacobean plays -- THE REVENGER'S TRAGEDY, John Webster's THE WHITE DEVIL and THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, John Ford's 'TIS PITY SHE'S A WHORE -- and I was thrilled by their imagery, their elaborate metaphors. I had also just read Willa Cather's "My Mortal Enemy," and I had been struck by the control, the simple clarity of her prose. I wanted to see if I could combine their methods in a plainly-told story about jeweled monsters.

Q: What is the last book that you read? (Not counting anything you wrote)

A: MEDEA, by Lucius Annaeus Seneca, in translations by Moses Hadas, Frank Justus Miller, and E. Greslou. This is horror, with a great last line.

Q: When writing, do you have a system or something you plan, or do you just write?

A: I need to have a strong sense of how the story opens and closes, a firm idea of at least one central conflict. When I was younger, I wrote to find out what I needed to write, but these days, I outline every part in detail before I begin; it makes the writing much easier. Then I revise, revise, revise.

Q: Why do you write?

A: So much in life passes by in a moment: so much appears and then fades in a glimpse, a glance, a stray notion. Writing allows me to save at least a portion of this before the moment dies.

Q: Any final thoughts that you want to give to your fans or even future authors?

A: You might find that you can learn more about the world, and about yourself, by reading Shakespeare, Thomas Browne, or Montaigne, than by skimming through the latest 400,000 page best-seller. The past can speak to us in undiscovered ways, if we take the time to hear it, and it can often speak to us directly -- one human being to another.

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