Interviewing James Bennett

Helloo!

I recently reviewed and loved the great horror and fantasy collection Preaching to the Perverted by James Bennett a brilliant and varied collection of tales with a key focus on gay characters being in focus from youth all the way to old age. It was a pleasure to invite James to the blog to discuss this collection and more!

How do you like to booktempt people into reading ‘Preaching to the Perverted’?

Aside from the hot man on the cover, ‘Preaching to the Perverted’ features thirteen dark tales drawn from gay lived experience. There’s a range of stories from Kafkaesque aliens coming out to ageing magicians hell-bent on revenge, blending the fantastical with horror. There’s mayhem, magic and sex.

As one reviewer recently remarked, ‘It’s a party.’ It is!

The sequence of tales feels like we are watching stages of life from young teen characters working themselves out to older characters slightly more at ease with life. Was this something deliberate or how your stories have evolved over the years?

It was definitely deliberate. On the architrave of the British Museum there’s a tableau depicting the Progress of Man, and I think that’s where the idea started. I wanted to achieve the same with my lived experience in a sequence of stories, going from the early days in the closet to an imagined future (in this case perhaps the worst one possible). The collection is a journey through time and it was interesting to play with the different perceptions of the characters in that regard.

Oddly, I found it easier to write about the worst stuff (being young) than the present stuff, and I hope in some way that reflects that it does get easier in terms of self-acceptance – though I’m in no way as fucked up as the guys in the stories! Maybe the fact of the collection speaks to that as well. Partly I was playing with the broader perception that gay men live these horrible lives, which was partly tongue-in-cheek and partly a reaction to a lot of OTT shiny representation.

Homophobia, exclusion and even violence are never very far from gay lives, whatever age you happen to be. Personally, I prefer to confront that. I think it’s more realistic and probably healthier. Sure, there’s a place for gay romance. It just doesn’t work for me as a reflection of lived experience.

Maybe I’m a bit fucked up, after all.

Horror and fantasy are still evolving in how queer characters and authors being treated. How important is it that we have them now at the heart of the story (be they hero or villain) rather than hidden in the background or in subtext?

I’ve always thought it vital. I’ve always fought for the opportunity to write gay MCs and for a long time that wasn’t too welcome in the mainstream. Rep existed, of course, and going back through genre history too, but rarely front and centre. And even more rarely, focused on lived experience.

Thankfully, I came along at a time when publishers were OK with secondary queer characters, who weren’t too sexualised or central to the plot. I managed to get gay and bi characters into my mainstream Fantasy novels (and in places a tad explicitly). There was a sense of an industry testing the waters and yes, there was pushback as there is today. But I’m grateful that I happened to be writing in an era where it was at least possible.

It was a place to stick one’s foot in the door and explain how limitation in fiction in itself reflects the social exclusion of the wider world. You know, you’re allowed to “take part” as long as you don’t draw too much attention to yourself.

On a positive note, it’s been one of the joys of my life to see the industry become more aware of that and things start to change. Publishers realised that there’s an audience for queer inclusion and rep out there, even among broadminded readers who just want a good story regardless.

It’s important that all readers of any stripe get to see themselves reflected as equals, for sure. It embraces us as human. It shows others what’s achievable. I believe it changes things for the better.

Which was the hardest story to write in this collection and why?

Hands down, that’s going to be ‘Queer Norm’. There’s wryness throughout the collection – you don’t get to survive without developing a dark sense of humour – but ‘Queer Norm’ takes off the gloves and drops the curtain on… well, hate and how it feels to live in its shadow. I wanted to tap into the paranoid, stifling atmosphere of it, that maybe the worst doesn’t always happen, but every day you’re living with the potentiality. And what that does to a person. How it can infect and embitter you, even lead you to becoming hateful yourself.

As the story describes, I see hate as a poison in that regard. It pollutes everything it touches, including those lost to the grip of it who want to dehumanise and hurt others. They’re poisoned and they deserve our pity.

I don’t recommend revenge. I think that’s the saddest part of the story, Norm’s caving in to it. Hopefully, the subtext also portrays another aspect of survival. When you choose to live above hate and hold onto love, then you learn courage.

But yes, as a survivor of homophobic violence myself, and a survivor of living in fear, it was difficult to put my head back in that space.

I can’t say I like the story – Lord knows publishers didn’t seem to – but I’m glad I wrote it.

What do you enjoy about writing short fiction?

The immediacy is great. If you’re like me and get a hundred ideas a day, short fiction is the best way to exercise (exorcise) that. Writing novels is a long process with a different set of skills, and time is limited, so there are also benefits to getting work out there and keeping readers invested in what you’re doing.

The process of short fiction is also an important lesson for any writer, I think. The compression of effect. How to get big ideas and feelings into a limited space. Pacing, tone and delivery – all of these help when you come to write longer works, I find.

Completion for any writer is a wonderful feeling as well. Writing short fiction is like a drug that allows you to get your fix on a regular basis ha ha.

Who are some of your favourite short fiction writers?

That’s a long list. I grew up reading Bradbury, Ballard, Howard, Carter, Moorcock, Tolkien, Le Guin, Leiber, Dahl, Jackson, Isherwood, Poe, Kafka, Twain, King, Barker… I could go on. These days I admire writers such as Angela Slatter, Priya Sharma, Joe Koch, Thomas Ligotti, Jeff Vandermeer, Paula Ashe, Steve Berman… another exhaustive list.

But I think I had a good grounding in the form. It’s no surprise that I attempted shorts first as a writer. Short stories remain my first love.

What else can we look forward to from you in the future?

Well, I’m currently coming to the end of my (counts) seventh completed novel. This one is a little different in that I approached the idea as a composite novel, so really it’s three connected novellas with three supporting stories (two of them published). In fact, there are a couple of more related stories, but they don’t feed directly into the central plot. At some point I looked up and realised I was writing this whole milieu and should bring it together somehow. That’s the novel.

Readers of my historical witchy stuff might get a surprise if I can manage to swing things with a publisher. No pun intended. This one treads the line between dark fantasy and horror. I think there are elements of the Ben Garston Novels in there too, in terms of high adventure and epic stakes. I’ve had a lot of fun with it.

I also mean to write another episode of The Red Rose Knight. I’m kind of working along two distinct strands at the moment, because I’m drawn to the Arthurian as well. One of the novels on sub is a reasonably stout Arthurian epic. I like Horror. I like Fantasy.

But the novel game is slow and I still have two out on submission (and for many months now), so you can see why short story writing is also attractive. Hopefully, while I’m waiting, I’ll get some new ones out there and put out another collection in the not-too-distant future!