Interviewing Dan Coxon on Only The Broken Remain

Hello!

today I reviewed Dan’s excellent short story collection Only The Broken Remain (reviewed here ) a trip into the strange and weird side of the world offering stories of the weird and the strange with a dash of terror. Dan very kindly spoke to me about this collection, lockdown and a lot more

How would you booktempt the collection?

DC: I’m not always comfortable promoting my own work, so I’m probably not the person to ask! If I had to, though, I’d say that Only the Broken Remain is a collection of weird and uncanny tales about the outcasts and the marginalised, the broken people of the title. It gets quite dark at times, but there are also some rays of hope, I think. You’d do a better job of selling it than me, though.

There seemed to be a running theme of people crossing into different worlds, sometimes natural, sometimes supernatural. Is that something that fascinates you?

DC: I think it’s a running theme in weird and uncanny fiction in general, and therefore something that I’m interested in, yes. In someone like Lovecraft, those worlds involved timeless alien gods; in the classic ghost story, it’s a line between the living and the dead that’s crossed. It’s that liminality that’s interesting to me, the idea of being in the borderlands, and undergoing a process of change. The idea that our own existence overlaps with another existence of which we have little – if any – understanding is a recurring theme, and it’s what we’re seeing at the moment, with the global Covid-19 pandemic. Our current anxiety and dread of an invisible killer has a very weird horror vibe to it.

Added to that theme, there are a number of different locations from Sydney to Swindon – how have these particular places stuck with you for these stories?

DC: I’ve done quite a lot of travelling over the years – we lived in America for five years, travelled around Australia for nine months, I worked in New Zealand for three months too – so I wanted to bring some of that knowledge to Only the Broken Remain. I also hope it gives some variety and colour to the stories. If the common thread is the characters, then the backdrop can change from story to story.

There is an ambivalence in the stories I loved – it’s not all horror, but some optimistic and some just beautifully weird. How do you like the reader to keep guessing?

DC: I think that if you just write in one mode all the time, then it lessens the impact on the reader. If you’re always building up to that big moment of horror – well, the reader can see it coming, and then maybe the horror isn’t so horrifying after all. That’s fine if you’re writing an individual story, but for a collection it runs the risk of becoming repetitive and predictable. There are a couple of genuine horror stories here – there be monsters! – some ghost stories, and some slightly gentler pieces of weird fiction. Hopefully the theme and the tone pull them all together, but the stories themselves go in all sorts of directions.

How has short fiction changed over the period you’ve been writing these tales? What impact is 2020 looking likely to have on publishing?

DC: The earliest of these stories was written about six years ago, so for a relatively slim collection Only the Broken Remain spans quite a long period! I’m not sure short fiction itself has changed much, but my own situation has changed enormously. We have two kids now, and as I’ve watched them growing up it has influenced, and changed, my writing in all sorts of ways. I’ve also become more familiar, and more comfortable, with the horror and weird fiction scene here and in the US, which I think has been productive. Like any genre, it’s in a constant state of flux, a never-ending conversation and exchange of ideas between writers. As for 2020 itself, I suspect it’s too early to say. We’re all having to get used to online book launches, though. I can’t wait to prop up the bar at a convention again.

What is next for you in 2021 and where can we find out more?

DC: I’m working on two books for 2021, both as editor. Details of both are still under wraps at the moment, but I can say that one is an anthology of horror and dark fantasy, while the other is a co-edited non-fiction book intended as a writing guide for these kinds of stories. I’m really excited about both, and we have some wonderful contributors lined up.

So in lockdown which book stuck with you the most?

DC: Probably Stephen Graham Jones’s The Only Good Indians. I thought it was thrilling, smart, incredibly well written, and a unique story and voice for the horror scene. It also constantly blindsided me, heading in directions that I couldn’t predict. If my stories can achieve even a fraction of that, then I’ll be a happy man.