Posted By Leo Johnson on August 14, 2013

Currently seeking funding on Kickstarter, Seven Stones is an anthology of short stories and graphic novel set in the Wrecked Earth, the setting of C.E.L. Welsh‘s debut novel Clutch. The Wrecked Earth is an Earth much like our own, except it’s been bombarded by meteors in an event called “Rockfall”. The meteors and the devastation they brought destroyed society, leaving humans in dire straits. The radiation from the fallen meteors have leaked into the earth, mutating animals and harming the land, making this Wrecked Earth even more of a dangerous place to live in.

The titular seven stones are seven meteors that made it to Earth and stories surrounding them. Seven writers and seven artists were tasked with bringing these seven stories of the Wrecked Earth to life in what will eventually be a combination short story anthology/graphic novel omnibus. With the project running on Kickstarter for the rest of the month, various writers and artists were kind enough to talk about Seven Stones, their contribution to the book, and how it feels to play in another creator’s (devastated) world.

Today’s chat is with William Meikle, author of many a short story and novel, including the recent horror novel The Hole. Meikle’s contribution the Seven Stones is as writer of the story Staying Alive Among the Beasts.

Leo Johnson: Tell us a bit about yourself, if you would.

William Meikle: I’m a fifty-something Scotsman, now living in Newfoundland.

I didn’t chose writing, it chose me. The urge to write is more of a need, a similar addiction to the one I used to have for cigarettes and still have for beer. It’s always been there, in the background. I wrote short stories at school, and dabbled a couple of times over the years, but it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that it really took hold.

Back in the very early ’90s I had an idea for a story… I hadn’t written much of anything since the mid-70s at school, but this idea wouldn’t leave me alone. I had an image in my mind of an old man watching a young woman’s ghost. That image grew into a story, that story grew into other stories, and before I knew it I had an obsession in charge of my life.

So it all started with a little ghost story, “Dancers”; one that ended up winning a prize in a national ghost story competition, getting turned into a short movie, getting read on several radio stations, getting published in Greek, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, and getting reprinted in The Weekly News in Scotland.

Since then I’ve sold over 300 short stories, including appearances in the likes of NATURE and DAILY SCIENCE FICTION among many others, and I’ve had 18 novels published in the horror and fantasy genre presses, with more coming over the next few years.

LJ: For the past two decades or so, you’ve been writing and publishing short stories and various novels. With all these novels and stories under your belt, how does it feel to have something you’ve written become a comic?

WM: My mind works visually anyway—I’ve been told my writing runs in people’s heads like movies—so it wasn’t a big stretch for me. I like to think I have a way with set-pieces that translates pretty well to the comic format.

I grew up, like most of us did, with comics, in my case back in the early ’60s when Marvel was just getting going. Those early, slightly twisted, heroes were a direct and big inspiration to my own writing once I got going myself.

LJ: The Seven Stones is both a comic anthology project and a collection of short stories set in a shared world. There’s a great group of talent working on the book. What is your contribution to the project going to be?

WM:  I had a thought about what would happen to zoo animals in the event of an apocalypse and it wouldn’t let go—so that’s what my story is about. A zoo-keeper, trying to keep his flock alive in the face of a world that no longer cares and a bunch of bad guys looking for fresh meat. It’s called STAYING ALIVE AMONG THE BEASTS

LJ: Seven Stones is a post-apocalyptic story that ties into an already established universe from a related novel. How does it feel to be adding to an already established universe, rather than helping to make one from scratch?

WM: It’s something I’m pretty comfortable with, having written a lot of stories for Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger and Carnacki, and having spent a fair bit of writing time in Lovecraftian universes. It frees up a lot of thinking time when you’ve got a lot of things already created for you.

LJ: Much of what you’ve written features monsters and madness and men who can win a fight. Have these sort of ideas that you’ve played with for so long translated into the Wrecked Earth and your story for the Seven Stones?

WM: My tale is a pulpy one, in line with my own ideals for a good story – it’s something I could see running in an “Eerie Tales” or “Weird Stories” style pulp comic. And yes, it has monsters, and madness, in spades

LJ: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

WM: Big beasties fascinate me. Some of that fascination stems from early film viewing. I remember being taken to the cinema to see The Blob. I couldn’t have been more than seven or eight, and it scared the crap out of me. The original incarnation of Kong has been with me since around the same time. Similarly, I remember the BBC showing re-runs of classic creature features late on Friday nights, and THEM! in particular left a mark on my psyche. I’ve also got a Biological Sciences degree, and even while watching said movies, I’m usually trying to figure out how the creature would actually work in nature — what would it eat? How would it procreate? What effect would it have on the environment around it?

On top of that, I have an interest in cryptozoology, of creatures that live just out of sight of humankind, and of the myriad possibilities that nature, and man’s dabbling with it, can throw up.

And that’s where STAYING ALIVE AMONG THE BEASTS mostly came from – B-movies, comics, and a deep love of big hungry beasties.

LJ: Where else can you be found around the internet?

WM: Details of all my books and short stories are on my website at http://www.williammeikle.com

I mostly hang out on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/williammeikle

 

 

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Categories: Comics, Interviews
Tags: comics, interviews, Kickstarter, Seven Stones, Seven Stones Seven Interviews, The Hole, William Meikle