Interviewing Dan Coxon
Hello!!
A few weeks ago I reviewed the horror collection Green Fingers by Dan Coxon reviewed here . Dan was kind enough to answer a few questions on the book and his writing career.
What is it about the natural world that makes us afraid of it?
I should probably start by saying that I’m not scared of nature – I’m no botanophobe. I love gardening, grow vegetables on an allotment nearby, walk through the woods on a regular basis just to feel the dirt beneath my feet. I’m an amateur plantsman, which is precisely why I wanted to write short stories about plants and nature: they’re what interests me most. But at the same time, I do think there’s plenty of scope for horror in nature. As the Covid-19 pandemic has shown us, nature always finds a way of creeping through our defences, catching us unawares. (Unless you subscribe to the theory that it was started in a lab, of course… but that’s a whole other horror story.) We’re still finding new species, growing our understanding of the natural world – and yet if we know anything with any certainty, it’s that we still know very little. In recent years, scientific studies have suggested that trees and other plants may ‘communicate’ with each other via a hidden network of mycorrhizal fungi. Who could have seen that coming? A horror writer, maybe…
Was it easy choosing the stories to base around the theme?
I didn’t intentionally set out to write Green Fingers. Instead, it was more a case of following my interests – and they led me here. After I’d been writing nature stories for a while, it occurred to me that some of them hung together quite nicely. Steve Shaw at Black Shuck Books was doing these lovely little micro-collections of themed stories, and I figured that might be a nice home for my weird plant stories. Luckily, Steve agreed!
In the collection you got to have Among the Pines which you note is your oldest story and started your interest in horror and the weird. How did that story hook you in?
I’d been writing ‘literary’ fiction for a while before that, but was finding it increasingly frustrating. It was feeling more and more like I was trying to shoehorn myself into a particular style of writing that wasn’t my natural inclination, and rejecting ideas that didn’t fit the criteria of the magazines I was submitting to. This felt fundamentally wrong – to be twisting my writing to try and fit a market, rather than following my own interests. I was on holiday with my family at Center Parks, of all places, and our son was taking an afternoon nap while my wife was at the spa. I found myself sitting down to write in the couple of spare hours that I had, and my thoughts immediately leapt to the weirdness that is ‘Among the Pines’. In many ways it was the lack of preparation that sent me down that particular path – I didn’t have a market in mind, and didn’t necessarily expect it to be published. Plus, Center Parks can be a pretty horrific place, you know. They’re entirely to blame.
How do you think the market has changed regards horror over recent years?
Interestingly, I think there’s a lot more crossover between literary fiction and horror at the moment. There can sometimes be a degree of resentment towards that crossover among the genre writers – ‘how dare these so-called literary writers assume to know our genre?’ – but I think it’s almost always a productive cross-fertilisation. Readers who might not normally read horror are picking up writers like Andrew Michael Hurley and Sarah Perry and finding they like it; on the flip side, some of the genre writers are having to improve their game. You’re starting to see writers like Catriona Ward and Justin Cronin, who somehow straddle the border between the two. I like it.
Do you find also being an editor helps you write short fiction?
It doesn’t help much with the writing – if anything, it detracts from it, as a lot of my spare time is spent working on other people’s books! But it certainly helps once I get to the editing stage. Looking back, I was always very soft on myself – I’d know something was wrong with a story, but I’d convince myself otherwise, give myself a pass. Now, if my gut tells me that something needs fixing, I listen to it. I’m a pretty harsh editor when it comes to my own work, and I’ve got a lot better at listening to advice and critiques from other writers too. I actually enjoy the editing process more than the writing a lot of the time – the writing is the freeform creativity, but the editing is where the story really starts to take shape.
What are you working on at the moment?
I have another collection of short fiction – a full-length book this time, rather than a micro-collection – which I’m trying to find a home for. Hopefully I’ll have some good news on that front later this year. As for writing, I’m putting short stories on hold for a while, as I try to complete an idea for a novel that’s been hanging over me for the last couple of years. Assuming I can make it work (and make the time to write), that’s going to occupy most of my writing year.
If there was one book (not your own) that you love to recommend to other people what would it be?
I tend to use Alan Garner as a kind of litmus test when I meet other writers – if they enjoy Garner, then they’re probably doing something I’m interested in. The Owl Service is my favourite book of his, so I guess that would be my answer. I have a huge soft spot for Robert Holdstock’s Mythago Wood and Lavondyss, though. Two of the best books I’ve read, in any genre.
