Hellooo!

One horror anthology that really stood out to me this year has been No Happily Ever After by Phil Sloman a tremendous set of varied horror tales that surprised me and in every case impressed me from a simple street scene, strange AI to a couple at the end of the world its a dazzling collection. I was very pleased to have the chance to ask Phil a few questions about this and a few other things.

Hi, Womble. Fantastic to be here in your Book Burrow! Thanks for having me.

How do you like to booktempt No Happily Ever After?

I like to think of No Happily Ever After as a dark slice of life from told cradle to the grave but I’m not sure that quite does the booktempting as well as I could, and which is why I’ve never had a career in marketing, so how about this.

A recent reviewer said, “This is a quiet but no less creepy, thrilling, disturbing, terrifying sleeper of a collection and Phil Sloman is an unassuming horror assassin.”

If that doesn’t sell it then I am not sure what else will!

What struck me about the collection is the way the reader is constantly unsure where the razor blade in the tale is hidden which builds a sense of unease. How do you like to structure the horror in a tale?

Love that phrase “unsure where the razor blade is hidden”. I’ve never really thought about it like that before. I think writers always get more perspective about our own writing from readers and their reactions and insights.

But back to the question in hand, how do I like to structure things. For me, there’s a rhythm to my stories which I can feel as I am writing in the same way, I guess, that someone composing music can feel where the tempo needs to shift. I know I am not alone in that as a writer. And everything is centred around the character. You have to care what happens to the protagonist and those around them whether that be your wanting them to live or die with ultimately the journey being just as if not more important than the destination. And there’s a sense of plausibility to everything. These are everyday folks who are probably a little bit broken (aren’t we all?) put into situations which perhaps aren’t too far from our own realities, situations which often feel relatable with a dose of the strange tipping things ever so slightly off-kilter.

So I like to bring you into their lives straight away and layer the story around them, building the world and the situation slowly, bulking up those layers, adding detail to the characters, mannerisms, speech patterns, relationships, introducing outside forces, often hinted at, perhaps provide a little foreshadowing, revealing more and more about our characters and the situation we find them in until we get to the point with you, the reader, strapped in and fully invested, the brakes aren’t working, and there’s nothing you can do but see it through to the inevitable tragic ending.

You shift horror from a simple ice cream van, AI and the end of the world – do the situations come first or the sense of horror you want to invoke?

It varies a lot and often it’s more of a concept than a situation with the sense of horror following. Mostly, my writing revolves around that wonderful question of “What if?”. So Dust was written to an open call to write about what happens when the end of the world is nigh and how people react. Well what if someone doesn’t know it’s happening around them? Samantha, Stop, the AI based story, was written because I was frustrated with keep telling our AI device to stop whenever it would go off on a tangent but what if there was something else behind it, ultimately becoming a ghost story but more so a tale about relationships and guilt. Not Simon, based on a dark patch which won’t seem to go away above where I sleep at home but where has it come from? And The Debts We Owe was formed from a writing prompt I was given about an ice cream van and what do all ice cream vans have written on the back of them? Caution – Children. How can that simple but deadly phrase not inspire you as a horror writer!

What was the hardest story in the collection to write and why?

From an emotional point of view, Dust broke me in so many ways. I really get into the heads of my characters when I write them and hopefully that then spills out on to the page. For those who haven’t read it, it’s about an elderly couple when the world has just ended after a nuclear war and the wife is living with dementia. Far too easy to picture that being my wife and I in the future even though the characters are very different to us. There’s a scene involving a pillow which is barely more than two paragraphs long but it tears me apart every time I read it.

In terms of physically, I found that Samantha, Stop took me a long time to write; somewhere around eight months which is ridiculous for a short story but this was all around the time of the pandemic, and my mother sadly passed away, and at the same time I was also made redundant so where the words would usually flow this time, this time around the motivation and impetus had gone and it’s taken a long time to start to get that back again. Speaking to a lot of writer friends, I don’t think I am alone in this post-pandemic as we all were affected in so many different ways.

Who are some of your favourite short story fiction writers?

James Everington, Laura Mauro, Priya Sharma, Stephen Bacon, Edgar Allan Poe, Clive Barker, Shirley Jackson, Cate Gardner, Penny Jones, Robert Shearman, Nathan Ballingrud, Matthew Bartlett, Kit Power, Stephen Volk, Helen Marshall, and so many more. While there are a few older names in there, we’re in an amazing era for short fiction, and particularly weird fiction, and I would wholeheartedly recommend people go and check out some of the incredible anthologies being put out today. You’re bound to discover several new authors who are producing stories which will stay with you for a long time.

What else can we look forward to you from you in the future and where can we find out more?

Not a huge amount currently but this goes back to my earlier answer about effectively getting back on the writing horse. However, I do have a story coming out next year in an anthology from one of the leading British indie publishers which I’m very excited about. Otherwise, there’s a novella I’m working on which I am planning to get out next year and a couple of short stories to place too where sadly the original publications they were destined for aren’t going to happen anymore.

If there was one book, not your own, that you wish you could get everyone to read what would it be and why?

David Rix wrote a book called A Suite in Four Windows which I think came out in 2016. I picked up a copy at FantasyCon in possibly 2019 and went into it knowing nothing about the story but was completely blown away which I think is the best way really. Looking back at a short review I posted this is what I had to say: “Read this novella from David Rix in one sitting. Loved loved loved the ending. And a little bit envious of his prose and characterisation. Recommended for something a little bit different to the mainstream.”

To tempt folks further, and I really think people should be tempted by this excellent work, here is the blurb: “Four Windows. Four minds riding through derangement and beyond as clouds gather over the city of London. Four music students working hard to analyze a unique and extraordinary musical composition. From ‘The Night of the Electric Insects’ through the ‘Songs of Bones and Flutes’ to ‘God Music’ and the return trip, George Crumb’s ‘Black Angels’—noble; wicked; madness; ethereality. Listen and the sky turns yellow and lightning flickers like burning alcohol in the distance.”