Feature Category: Interviews

LITTLE MONSTERS is not a zombie film, but it is a film with zombies. Starring Alexander England as Dave, an immature man-child trying to get his life on track, Lupita Nyong’o as kindergarten teacher Miss Caroline, and Josh Gad as an obnoxious children’s entertainer, as they try to keep a class of five-year-olds safe from a zombie outbreak. STARBURST had the chance to sit down with director ABE FORSYTHE at the recent London Film Festival ahead of the film’s November 15th UK release…

STARBURST: There’s an interesting origin story behind this film, could you talk a little about it?

Abe Forsythe: Oh, 100%! That’s the most important part for me contextually, and that’s why I’ve made a real effort to travel with this movie to film festivals. People go into the movie, thinking ‘okay, we’re going to go in and see a zombie movie. I’ve seen zombie movies, I’m over zombie movies. Zombie comedies are only ever Shaun of the Dead and Zombieland.’ Everyone always says the same stuff. So for me, it’s really important to put forward where this movie came from. I’ve got a son who’s now eight years old, but he was born with multiple, severe food allergies and some other health conditions, and as a result he had never been out of my care – until he went to kindergarten.  Out of my camp until he went to kindergarten. And it was a really terrifying thing for me to have to hand him over to someone else.

We really lucked out though, because his kindergarten teacher was amazing. Not only did she look after his health needs, I also got to see him have his world opened up for the first time. So it led me to realise… I always knew teachers were important, and that they were undervalued. But specifically kindergarten ages, I just had never thought about all the things they do for us and for our kids; I got to see first-hand what this woman did for my son. And then what happened is that I chaperoned this school excursion with her, my son and 25 other kids – we went to a petting zoo, which is part of where we ended up shooting the movie. And the inspiration for the movie came from that. We were literally driving on a tractor train which stopped, and the woman driving the train got off to investigate something. It was just one of those random ideas of, what if it was a zombie? Then how would we protect these kids if there was a zombie apocalypse? And I just kept extrapolating from those ideas, like it’s not just stopping them from having their brains devoured by zombies. It’s actually about protecting them from being corrupted by everything that was around them. Then this thing just kind of poured out of me. The movie is basically a love letter to my son and to all that he’s taught me.

And the kid who takes the fictional placeholder for your son [Diesel La Torraca, as Felix], he’s incredible. That scene where he has an allergic reaction was probably the most emotional moment of the film.

That was really important, and I think he is incredible. It was also the hardest thing to film, for obvious reasons. And that was an important scene for me, because at that point it was still a fun zombie movie, with songs etcetera. It was key at that point to let the audience know there was still danger here, and specifically real-world dangers. One of these kids could die, and I wanted to make that point by having a threat that people can identify with; and building an action scene around someone trying to get an EpiPen was a good way of reminding people of the stakes. All the kids in that scene just did an incredible performance. And then you get to see Miss Caroline becoming the lioness protecting her cubs.

And it leads to that iconic image that’s on all the posters, of Lupita Nyong’o in a yellow dress soaked in blood, wielding a spade! What were your inspirations in creating her character and her look, beyond drawing from real-life?

I think there was some discussion with the costume designer – he’d done my last film and done an incredible job – along with the production designer and the DP, we did talk about wanting to push the world a little bit. Not so it’s so over-the-top that it becomes silly, but more that we needed to think about it. So the departments had a think about how to represent the characters in their look, which is why Miss Caroline wears the sunny dress, because she’s the light for these kids. And there’s something about that dress, with the bum-bag and the ukulele, it had a very Sound of Music quality to it; but then saturating that dress in blood, and the dichotomy of those colours working against each other. You’ve also got Teddy McGiggle in the big polka dot suit, and Dave in the heavy metal tees, which changes as his character develops. It was giving them a slightly pop kind of look but making sure we were grounding that with bits of performance that remind us it’s real, and that there’s serious stuff going on. We talked a little bit about the looks in Coen brothers’ comedies, or The Big Lebowski, where there’s so much backstory to their looks that they contribute to the worldbuilding.

What did you have to do to land someone like Lupita?

That was all my US casting agent, because she was the one that suggested making a list of people we thought would be great for Miss Caroline. And we started pre-production when our casting agent said, “Look, you’re going to get one of these people, and they’ll be great. But now’s the time to just swing for the fences. Let’s go unrealistic. Who’s that person you would want most for this movie?”.And Lupita was that person. No one thought we would get her. I happen to be at the same agency as her in the US, which meant that at least the script got put in front of her. She’d just finished doing Black Panther, she’d said she wanted something completely different, something she hadn’t done before, like a comedy. It just timed out well that her agent went, “It doesn’t get more different than this…” and gave her the script. Lupita read it, and 24 hours later we were having a two-hour long Skype call. And next thing was, she was on board. Everyone was just, “What the fuck just happened?” What was key for me was that the things that resonated with her in this movie were the same reasons I wanted it made, and having an actor of her calibre recognise that and come on board was incredible. And you know, there’s a lot of intentionally lowbrow things in the movie, but the reason they’re there is to show the contrast between that and the more beautiful, emotional things.

What’s interesting is that you focus so much on the kids and the humane element of the story that we never find out much about the zombies’ backstory. Why did you decide to leave that out?

There was a version of the movie where we started with the military base right at the beginning, and there were other versions where we explained more about it, but for me it was never something I was interested in. It was meant to be that these characters would find themselves in a movie that they didn’t think they would be a part of. We’re in their world and all of a sudden, we find ourselves in a zombie film. And to be honest, I feel like we we’ve seen so many zombie movies and TV shows that we’ve reached a saturation point where we don’t need the rules explained to us anymore. The only thing people need to know is, are they fast or slow? I wasn’t trying to make a zombie movie, zombies just happened to be in the movie.

And with all this talk about Lupita’s role, in fact it’s Dave who is the central character. Is that because you were placing yourself in the story?

Not really, he represents a very particular type of male for me. And it’s someone I think I shared traits with at some point before becoming a father, but I tell this story because, for all the normal, clichéd reasons, I was terrified of becoming a father. But when my son was born, I remember this profound feeling when I looked at him, that all those things I was worried about totally went away. At that moment it’s like, it’s now my job to make sure that you’re okay. So since then my life totally revolved around my son, but I remember when he was a toddler and we would walk down the street and every single time, when we would cross a couple, the man and woman reacted to him so differently. The woman would engage with the kid, and the guy would do everything in his power to pretend my son wasn’t there. That kind of guy was more the inspiration Dave, those who think that having a child will be the death of everything of who they are, when the reverse is true. It can be the beginning of you growing up and realising that there’s more to life than your own shit.

Do you have future projects in the works that we can look forward to?

I’m working on something else with Lupita and this film’s producers, on something that’s similar to Little Monsters in that it’s a genre. It’s not a zombie movie, it’s not horror. It’s a different genre that we’re very familiar with and would be totally in line with STARBURST. It’s making very big commentary on the world right now, and it’s going to be a lot of fun.

LITTLE MONSTERS opens in UK cinemas and on Sky Cinema November 15th.

Low budget folk horror film Armageddon Gospels is about to hit Apple TV, so we caught up with the director, John Harrigan, to find out more about it…

STARBURST: What was the inspiration behind Armageddon Gospels?

John Harrigan: The story grew out of the landscape of Sussex Downs and surrounding villages, it’s a beautiful and evocative place. When you’re there, you feel the presence of a spirit of the place. You only have to walk the hills and see the Long Man of Wilmington, where we shot the finale of Armageddon Gospels, to see how others have had their imaginations stirred by what resides there.

This combined with immense life changing events: early in 2016, I lost my mother to Alzheimer’s having been her main carer for six years. Grief can be a powerful inspiration, it helped me evaluate my relationship to the British landscape. The loss of David Bowie, my mother and then the aftermath of the EU referendum combined together to inspire me to create a story of lost gods engaged in a ritual to save Albion from a dark entity called the Bone King. The film explores the moment in history we find ourselves in.

Were there any films you had as a point of reference when you were in the planning stages?

Penda’s Fenn was probably the most important touchstone and reference, but also Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker. Each time I make a film, I find myself paying my respects to masters such as Tarkovsky.

Do you have a natural interest in folk legends and the like?

Yes, folk legends have always been an important aspect of my work as a storyteller. It’s a pleasure to reinterpret and reimagine an old folktale or legend, subverting them to use them in a modern context. This time, it was one of the earliest legends – that of the Holy Grail.

I think this is how stories are remembered and mutate over the years, through each generation of storyteller, revitalising a legend for their particular time and place. I love cult films, and I love seeing a story I know well through the eyes of a new filmmaker.

You really make the most the locations – some familiar to viewers – how did you go about securing those?

The gods and spirits in the film are exploring a dream version of England, so we had to make sure the modern world didn’t encroach or appear too many times. Often, we’d plan and arrange to shoot at a location, but on arrival we’d learn that it wasn’t possible due to the number of people present, so we’d pack our gear up and walk until we found somewhere that felt correct. In many ways, we were guided by the landscape of the South Downs, and what was occurring in real time, intuition played an immense part in securing locations. The landscape of the South Downs National park is perhaps the most important character in Armageddon Gospels.

Were there any problems you had during production?

The biggest problem we encountered during filming was that the camera of our DOP, Mark Caldwell, broke a week into the shoot. It was so windy that day that a part of a leaf got pulled into the fan and it stopped the camera. This was a terrifying moment, as we had no means or time to hire in a camera, on such a tight budget and schedule. Luckily Mark managed to fix it, however, it did mean we could no longer use the gimble rig for the rest of the shoot. We had used this piece of equipment for the majority of shooting in the first week, so had to adapt our shooting style, which brought alive other scenes in an unexpected way. Crisis is often a form of disguised opportunity.

Exhaustion was also a major factor, I’d written the script in a month shortly after I had lost my mum and we shot the film in just over three weeks in August 2016. The entire cast and crew lived and worked together, cooking for each other throughout the shoot in Kate Alderton’s former family home, the Haven. Kate played Aradia, and is an extremely talented actress and performer.

Kate, her partner, and two children patiently accommodated us all, their home was in the middle of all the incredible sites we were planning to shoot at. They were amazing hosts and I’m eternally grateful to them.

It often appeared that our journey to make Armageddon Gospels mirrored the quest the gods had to successfully complete for the ritual in the film, with cast and crew hiking everywhere, carrying all the camera equipment and gear to get the stunning shots, notably to the top of the Long Man of Wilmington. On this particular day, once we got to the top, we realised an essential item of equipment had been left half way up when we had stopped for a break, so Milo – one of the crew – had to run down and up to get it!

And lastly, the most important prop in the film is the Holy Grail. I wanted to use a piece of Molodovite, which is a green stone, taken from a meteorite that crashed in the region that is now the Czech Republic fifteen millions years ago. It’s said that this was the original inspiration for some of the Grail legends and it seemed like it would be impossible to obtain. However, it transpired that Kate Alderton’s mother, actor Pauline Collins, purchased this stone whilst shooting a film in the Czech Republic, and she agreed to lend it to us.

With Midsommar going down so well this year, do you think people are ready for a return of folk horror?

Yes I think so, pastoral and folk horror offer a perfect way to examine the horror of the immediate. The question of survival in the presence of otherworldly forms that don’t recognise human agency as absolute. Folk Horror, and especially Midsommar, appear as portents and omens of a very specific aspect of the time we’re living in now.

Storytelling as a repeated ritual is an important problem solving tool of immense adaptability. When you think about The Wicker Man as the definitive work of folk horror, it is very much about a community telling the story of the landscape’s survival, and casting Police Sergeant Howie as the fool, in a theatrical performance that the every resident of Summerisle engages in.

Tell us a little bit about Foolishpeople, your creative company.

FoolishPeople takes its name from the Fool tarot card, a character that teaches us we have to be willing to let go of outmoded ways of thinking. We celebrate our thirtieth anniversary this year!

The projects we have created always utilise ritual as a tool of storytelling in theatre and film. We helped pioneer immersive theatre in the late nineties and early 2000s. We used an old, disused abattoir in Clerkenwell to set two of our most successful stories, Abattoir Pages and A Red Threatening Sky. Location, and working with a site-specific process is always key to each of our projects. That often comes out of my imagining what story could exist in a specific locale, then interpreting that into the form of a script.

We’ve performed at Arcola Theatre and the ICA, Birmingham Rep, and also told stories across historic sites such as the Galleries of Justice in Nottingham.

Our first feature film, Strange Factories, was shot on location in Prague and took cult film as its core inspiration. We placed our audience into the experience of watching a lost film that was said to be haunted. We toured Strange Factories in the oldest and most unique independent cinemas in Britain with a live cinema event that had the characters from the film manifesting inside the cinema.

FoolishPeople is comprised of a small group of creatives that grows and expands during the time a project is live. I am the fool at the heart of FoolishPeople

Do you know what your next project will be?

I’m currently working on my third feature Lightships, a collaboration between GHRL Ltd and FoolishPeople. We shot in January and it is now in the final stages of post-production, having just reached picture lock. The screenplay is inspired and adapted from the book Remembrance by Maryann Rada:

Eve’s family is missing: her journal holds the key to locating them. As her world and reality begin to unravel, she must unlock the mystery of the visions and transmissions she is experiencing.

Is she a prisoner, a patient… or dead?

The film explores alien contact from the perspective of those who claim alien intelligences are being communicated via direct transmissions into their minds and imagination. In the same manner that Philip K. Dick stated that he was contacted by a pink beam of light; this later became an important aspect in his book Valis.

It’s interesting to be completing work on Lightships just as Armageddon Gospels is about to be released.

Armageddon Gospels is available on Apple TV from October 31st and reviewed here.

Whilst attending London Film Festival, director Lorcan Finnegan spoke with STARBURST to discuss his uncomfortably close to home mystery/sci-fi, Vivarium. Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots the film poses a claustrophobic and surreal look at suburbia living. (Warning: potential spoilers ahead.) 

STARBURST: how did the interesting story idea for Vivarium come together?

Lorcan Finnegan: It’s difficult to pin-point, but [co-writer] Garret Shanley and I made a short film in 2011 called Foxes and that was set in this ghost estate, this abandoned housing development in Ireland that became a product of the recession. So there were ideas and themes left over from that short film that we still wanted to explore. We were thinking ‘what if this housing development went on infinitely?’ in a much more quantum way, like a parallel universe. At the same time, I was watching this David Attenborough documentary about the life cycle of the European cuckoo, and we were discussing our next project. The cuckoo idea was related to coming up with a monster that was relevant to society today, a bit like the way that Godzilla is a product of the Japanese fear of atomic energy. We were trying to think of what young people in their 30s were really afraid of these days. The atomisation of society. Getting stuck on these commuter belts that are miles away from anywhere. Having to work in a city all day, commute, and come back and sleep in this little box again and again until they can pay off the mortgage and expire. There’s an existential horror to that. So it was all of those thoughts combined at the same time, which melded into the movie.

Can you tell us how you originally met Garret, and why you think that this pairing just works so well?

We met at this seminar for making low budget films in Dublin, called the Catalyst Project. You had to apply, there’s about 500 to 800 people who go into it, and you have to do a course. We just met there, he posted on their forum, he said that he was a writer, and I said that I was a director. By coincidence we ended up sitting beside each other at a talk, and we ended up just getting on. We wrote an application for this crazy comedy/sci-fi that we didn’t get chosen to make. After the process of collaborating on that, we then wrote Foxes. Garret had written it as a blog post on his own blog called Fug the World. I found that, it’s a really funny blog, and we developed it into a script and made that. We are working on a bunch of new things as well. It’s a good collaborative and artistic relationship.

The introduction with the birds, the wildlife scene, foreshadows the whole movie. So, how did this idea come about, and what was it like to film?

It was one of the main set ups for the story. I really like introductions that tell you about the film before the film begins. Something that encapsulates all of these ideas. We had it originally in the script as a longer scene that was in the tree outside of the school where Imogen Poots’ character Gemma is a teacher. The camera was supposed to be there for a while, and you see a bird feeding another bird, then the camera comes slowly down into the school. That ended up being impossible to do with the time restrictions, and the budget. We actually cut it out of the film entirely. Then when we were in post-production it felt like it needed that scene to set up the tone of the film. Also, I wanted to do a title sequence that set up what it was all about. To give you a feeling that it was more of a throwback to a ‘70s approach to sci-fi. So we went and we shot some elements of it. We got some wildlife stock, and we had to manipulate it to have the same kind of feel as the rest of the film.

There’s obviously a fantastic cast here. Can you tell us about what Imogen and Jesse were like to work with throughout the film as their characters descended into madness?

It was great. They are both brilliant actors. They are very open and collaborative. We met and talked a lot before shooting, but we didn’t really have much time to rehearse or anything. It was more about having conversations about what the film is about. The tone of it, the acting style is very naturalistic but in an unnaturalistic environment. So we were just talking about how that contrast would work. We shot the film completely out of sequence, because we did all of the exteriors in Belgium, and then all of the interiors in Ireland. So it was tricky to keep the same emotional intensity. Especially when Jesse is dragging Imogen back into the house, the scenes around it were weeks apart. They are brilliant actors, and very funny. Even though the film gets very dark, we had a great laugh.

They’ve worked together before, most recently on The Art of Self Defence, so did that further help you as a director, as they already had chemistry?

Yeah, I’m friends with Riley Stearns, who directed The Art of Self-Defence, it was just a coincidence that we ended up with the same cast. It was weird, because when he wrapped, he went on a European holiday and stopped off at Dublin, we hung out. I only got to see his film a little while ago, but I’m glad that it’s very different. It’s mostly Jesse, whereas this is mostly Imogen. To me anyway, it’s more her story.

They both provide a feeling of awkward frustration very well, especially from the moment they meet the estate agent. How fun was that scene in particular to work on with Jonathan Aris, and how important was it for you to get an instant sense of tension across to the viewer?

Yeah that was always part of the plan. Jonathan is brilliant, that was probably the hardest character to cast. We got audition tapes from a lot of people, but eventually we got one from Jonathan. I’ve seen his work before, but I’ve never seen him acting like that. With the tape I had written an explanation of exactly what I was looking for. So, when I got it, I was like ‘this guy is amazing!’ But Imogen and Jesse had never seen him. So a lot of their response on camera to him in that scene was quite real. It’s all shot in a way to create a sense of unease, but also a funny but weird feel, which I wanted to ease the audience in a little bit, because it does get quite surreal. To disarm it a little bit with the comedy.

At times the film does feel like an exaggerated version of the way some people live their lives, so could you elaborate on that, and how you went about putting that idea at various points throughout the movie?

All of the stuff that happens in the film are reflections of what does happen in real life, but just twisted in order to show just how bizarre a certain type of life can be. The reason we were doing that is to just highlight the strangeness of it. We are sold an idea of a way of living, it’s heavily advertised and pushed on people, this social contract that you sign up for. That’s what is insidious. It’s sold to you by people who purely want to make profit. It’s the same with these housing developments, these massive sprawling places with these identical houses. The only reason they are all identical is because you can fit a lot more of them into the space, it’s cheaper, and you can maximise the profits. It’s very calculated, and there’s this feel of capitalism at work. Even with the boxes arriving, it’s relating to people ordering content online and just not communicating to anyone. So all of the scenes in the film are really just trying to highlight that, but in a kind of nightmarish way. It’s not like a critique saying that that way of life is wrong, it’s more questioning what the alternatives are. It’s like the kid at the start who says that she doesn’t like the way things are, it’s representative of a future generation, where people might do things a little bit differently.

When the boy character arrives in the film, you do get this sense of divide between Imogen and Jesse. What did you enjoy the most about working on this mysterious character, and how crucial is he to the balance of the film?

Senan Jennings was great. He again was one of the big surprises, as we were trying to find this person who could mimic. His character sort of represents a child, but at the same time he’s not a child. He’s there to divide the couple, that’s essentially it. To create that drama between them. So his arrival is the beginning of the bad part. He just manipulates them to get what he wants. He’s not going to come up to you in the middle of the night and suck your blood. He just needs them for a certain amount of time until he doesn’t need them anymore, which for me is a lot more horrific.

There are also various freaky effects being used on his voice when he is younger. How did that idea come about?

It was always the plan that he was able to mimic them exactly but a little bit off. He only really needs to pretend to get away with being a person just enough to convince you to come into Yonder, the housing estate. Senan did kind of imitate them, but his own voice was too nice and enduring. So we actually got Jonathan Aris, who plays the estate agent at the beginning, to voice the child’s voice for the whole movie. The boy’s voice is a mix of his own voice and Jonathan’s throughout. So there would be this acoustic consistency between the species.

With the sets, sky, and overall quietness you really get that feeling of claustrophobic suburbia across. Could you tell us how you achieved that atmosphere and how essential it was to Vivarium?

In the script it was described as looking like the René Magritte painting Empire of Light. There being no wind, no sound, no birds, and no insects. It was the trickiest part. Yonder is a character in the film as well, the environment. We looked at tons of locations, and we also thought about mixing sets in with real locations, like that were half formed. Ultimately, we needed more control in order to make this headache but tangible world for the character to live in. So we built a set of tree exteriors, garden, wall, footpath, road, in a warehouse in Belgium. We used digital mapping, CGI, and sky replacement to extend it. Scans and 3D models made using the textures and dimensions of the set. So the CG is an extension of the same look. It feels like a giant set, but it’s not as big as what we built. Just for the tone of the film, it’s quite dreamy and nightmarish in a horrible, surreal way. If you were stuck there you’d get sick from no real sunlight. Roy Andersson films were an influence, with the way he’d build sets and have this sickly artificial light. It was really important to give this feeling that it wasn’t a real world, and that you’ve entered into another dimension. It’s like they’re trapped within a catalogue or brochure for Yonder that’s been photo shopped.

Without giving too much away, why should STARBURST readers watch Vivarium? Why does it stand out?

It’s certainly different! It’s a strange and unique little film. I think not everybody is going to love it. However, from showing it at festivals so far it seems like a lot of people really love it. If you’re looking for something different and interesting, and you like unusual genre films with amazing performances and existential dread then you’ll love it.

Vivarium will be released in 2020.

Raven Dane is a UK-based author best known for her dark fantasy and steampunk novels. STARBURST spoke to her to find out more about her new book Cyrus Darian and The Wicked Wraith.

STARBURST: What can you tell us about your forthcoming novel, coming out via Telos Publishing?

Raven Dane: Cyrus Darian and The Wicked Wraith is the third in a series of misadventures about my bad boy anti-hero, Cyrus Darian. A very bad boy who would sell his own mother – whoever she was – then steal her back and sell her again to someone else. His past is murkier than an ancient peat bog and hides as many secrets and bodies. He finds a haven in an alternative Victorian London. A city cloaked in toxic fumes and with the constant threat from demonic beings let loose a century before by an inept sorcerer’s meddling with occult forces. Persian-born, perhaps, Darian is a hedonist, philanderer, compulsive liar, alchemist and necromancer. He is also wealthy, charming, charismatic and financially generous to those drawn to him and his shady escapades. In this book, Darian finds it wise to make himself scarce in England due to a ruthless government-led crackdown on all occultists. The gift of a beautiful, genuine dragon scale sends him and his sidekicks to the Dutch East Indies and the volatile, active volcanos of Java.

What inspired the story?

Dragons. I love them. I always wanted a Cyrus Darian story to include a dragon. In this case, it’s an eastern mythos creature from Java. It is huge, it makes Smaug look like a gecko.

How is it different from your previous work?

My short stories in many international anthologies and my Absinthe and Arsenic collection with Telos are all definitely horror. My past novels are dark fantasy and supernatural alternative history. This latest book is from my steampunk world. They are fast-moving adventures with vivid characters and a bit tongue in cheek but never a parody of the steampunk genre which I love so much. I bring occult danger and dark magic into a Victorian world that never was. Probably a much-used trope now but it wasn’t back in 2011. This was when the first book, Cyrus Darian and the Technomicron, won the Victorian Steampunk Society’s Novel of the Year award, which had a shortlist that included work by well-established steampunk authors, Jonathan Green and Gail Carriger.

What is the appeal of horror?

I wish I could pin it down. What makes horror so intriguing? Why do so many of us love to be frightened out of our wits? It began at an early age for me. My younger brother and I would sneak down the stairs and peek through a gap in a door frame as our parents watched scary programmes like Quatermass or films like Hitchcock’s Psycho. The fear of being caught out of bed, as well as the frightening black and white imagery on the TV screen, gave us an intoxicating frisson of excitement. Somewhere in our young minds, we knew the films were not real, and our parents would only pretend to be cross, so it was a safe form of thrill-seeking. Maybe that is what the appeal is, to be scared witless but with no bad consequences. That pumping adrenaline we get from being frightened helped keep our distant ancestors alive. That twitch of greenery could be the warning of a sabre tooth tiger about to pounce. Maybe we need the scares from books and films to keep that life-preserving instinct. Come the zombie apocalypse, we will be grateful for it. I love writing horror though only short stories, I do not have the skills to keep up the tension for a full-length novel. I’m sure in some past life I was a tribal shaman and storyteller, crouching by a fire in a cave and spinning yarns of the monsters and evil spirits lurking in the darkness.

Which character from any of your novels would you most like to meet in real life? And why?

Well, certainly not Cyrus Darian… I wouldn’t trust him for a second! Or my beautiful but deeply flawed Dark Kind vampire, Jazriel. His insecurity and addiction driven personality can be exasperating. As a reader said ‘I never know whether to hug Jaz or give him a kick up the backside.’ So I think it would be Brandan, the wandering Irish warrior/bard from Death’s Dark Wings. The novel is an alternative history version of events leading up to 1066, one complete with Celtic pagan magic, valiant Saxons and primitive but deadly steam-driven Norman weaponry. Brandan is fierce, brave and honourable and easy on the eye! He also sings and plays a haunted golden harp beautifully.

What approach do you take when writing fantastic elements?

My mother was Irish, my father Welsh, so I am most definitely a child of the Celtic Twilight. I am also a practising Pagan, pantheistic hedgewitch. There is an eerie darkness about the old stories of the Irish Sidhe and Welsh Tylwyth Teg that intrigue and inspires me. Fairy folk are not sparkly pretty things with magic wands and butterfly wings, and I use their legendary eerie strangeness and danger in my stories.

I try hard to create a sense of otherworldliness when using the supernatural in storylines. From my own experiences through life, I do believe that other dimensions exist alongside ours. That sometimes the veil between those dimensions can thin and glimpses of another can be seen. I don’t use magic as a get out of jail free card in my stories, there are always serious consequences to dabbling in strange forces and contact with preternatural beings. I sometimes use the term Old Earth Magic in my storylines, it’s dark and ancient and cares nothing for the wellbeing of humans that are brave or foolish enough to use it.

Ironically, the least supernatural books I have written are about vampires. My Dark Kind are not the Undead, and they are not human. They are a species higher up the food chain to humans, and their long lives are due to superior biology. They are most definitely mortal and have no supernatural powers. They also do not sparkle or fall in love with humans – that would be considered bestiality to them.

How do you approach your writing?

Some people meticulously plan their work, write copious notes beforehand, map out timelines and spend many hours in prior research. Or there are people like me who throw themselves into storytelling, flying by the seat of our pants. Either method is perfectly valid. If there are rules to writing, I have never read them. An idea, often just a single image comes into my head, one that won’t go away. I begin writing that scene, and the book begins to form organically around it. For instance, one image of a dark-clad horseman negotiating a tangled forest by moonlight sparked the whole of my Legacy of the Dark Kind trilogy. When I first discovered and fell in love with steampunk, I began experimenting with making jewellery and artefacts (really badly!) I thought up the name of a mysterious, magical shop selling these pieces and that triggered the creation of Cyrus Darian and his world. I write stories that are very much character-driven. So much so that it feels like channelling them from another dimension… a very real dimension where they can sometimes take over and challenge where the plot is leading. Jazriel was the worse for making me change his story. He became so real that even my husband said he should be paying us rent. He is still my Muse. A wayward one with the habit of deserting me at times.

As I write, I do research – a great deal of it. Even magical, fantastic stories must have a base in plausibility. I believe to do less is to short change your readers. A typical example involves horses, the centre of my non-writing life for many decades. I remember reading a high fantasy story that had a knight riding a nineteen-hand high warhorse. That would be well over six feet at the shoulders. A warhorse that tall would be a liability. Difficult to mount and dismount from and virtually impossible to climb up on in full armour without a winch. The warrior would be too high up to engage with an enemy fighting on foot. And that’s not counting the cost of feeding and housing such a gigantic equine. Every mounted warrior in real history has used small, strong and agile horses. The huge size of Shire horses came much later when they were only bred for agricultural work.

Is the fantasy community as accessible as it thinks it is?

I think so.  I hope so! At the start of my writing career, I only received wonderful friendship and support as a newbie from already established fantasy writers. There were a couple of exceptions but not worth changing my views over. I also value the friendship from the LARP and cosplay community, who I have met over the years at events. There can be a different vibe to the horror and SF communities… sadly there are often some high profile feuds and problems, but that is just people being people. I am certain the same things happen in trainspotting circles, hamster clubs, and giant vegetable growing.

Is it easier to get published these days?

A classic how long is a piece of string question! If you are a media ‘celeb’ with a good agent, then it is very easy… you don’t even have to write a word. That’s what ghostwriters are for. The world of self-publishing, especially with CreateSpace and Amazon Kindle, could not be easier for every Tom, Dick, and Harriet to get their work out there. Breaking into mainstream traditional publishing has always been difficult. Many of the larger publishers will only take author submissions through established literary agents and getting an agent is harder than winning the lottery. I certainly believe quality smaller presses offering traditional contracts can offer good experience for writers. It’s in their interests to continue to support and promote their authors over a longer period of time than the big five are able to do. They do not, however, have the same budgets for advertising and promotion. For all writers, however published, getting their work noticed amid an ever-growing tidal wave of new books is a nightmare… who can see any individual waving in the midst of a tsunami? This is the hardest problem facing all writers these days, one I wish I had an answer to.

What’s next?

I’m working on another novel set in my existing alternative Victorian London. This book centres on a run-down East End music hall theatre whose fortunes are revived by a troupe of demons and magical creatures pretending to be human to survive detection. I’m having a great deal of fun writing it and hope readers will feel the same way. I hope to rerelease my comedic take of high fantasy, The Unwise Woman of Fuggis Mire, originally with Endaxi Press. I have a fabulous new cover for this. I also have a post-apocalyptical novella due to be published later this year – too early to officially release details yet. Think Mad Max crossed with Game of Thrones – shiny chrome meets rusty chain maille in a dangerous, toxic landscape.

What authors are you reading? And why?

I am currently working my way through The Expanse novels by S. A. Corey. I fell out of love with SF many years ago but never with SF TV and films. I became hooked to the point of obsession with the TV series of The Expanse. I downloaded the first novel of the series and found it as brilliant and exciting as the TV version. Beautifully written Space Opera with fully fleshed-out characters to care about, believable science-based action and vivid imagination given full rein.

I have a quarantine thing going on with reading… I am paranoid over any influence creeping into my own work, so I do not read any steampunk or vampire novels. I made an exception with Sam Stone’s wonderful Vampire Gene series as they are so different to mine and highly addictive. My main go-to reading for pleasure are horror and SF novels. These include the terrifying books of Adam Nevill. His Last Days made me sleep with the lights on for weeks!  I do enjoy a big, meaty Stephen King horror novel and I also love the work of Joe Hill.  I have an increasingly long ‘to read’ list, which includes Jilly Paddock’s SF book Starchild, Joe Hill’s Strange Weather and Adrian Tchaikovsky’s Children of  Time.

If you had the chance to preserve one bit of media in such a way that it would last forever, what would it be?

That is a tough one! I’m sure greater minds than mine could come up with worthy answers. It would have to be beautiful, inspiring and reflect all the good things humanity is capable of achieving. I would have to choose music – classical wonders like Allegri’s Miserere Mei Deus and O Mio Babbino Caro by Puccini. Also a selection of world and popular music. The beauty of good music is timeless and universal.

Raven Dane’s Cyrus Darian and the Wicked Wraith is available now.

KT Davies is a British Fantasy Award nominated author who happens to be based in the Midlands. Their series The Chronicles of Breed has gained lots of critical acclaim and has a cult following. The final book in the series, Something Wicked, has just been released.

STARBURST: How would you describe The Chronicles of Breed to new readers?

KT Davies: As funny as Deadpool and as epic as Game of Thrones. It’s a baroque n’ roll adventure. It gud, much fight. I also like how one review described it as ‘the fantasy version of Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’.

What’s the latest book about?

Being old, dealing with loss and responsibility. Also, dragons.

How would you pitch it to a beloved elderly relative?

Book? What book? Oh, that book. I swear I never heard of it before you and the church book group happened upon it, honest. Same name? a pure coincidence, Grannie. Davies is a very common name. Yes, I agree, that other KT Davies is a reprobate. No Gran, they’re not right in the head, you’re absolutely right about that. Now, how about another Werther’s Original and a cup of tea?

Some of the details about the protagonist are pretty ambiguous throughout. Why?

Why not? In truth, I was vague on purpose, partly to see what readers made of the ambiguities (if anything), and partly to see if I could write an entire novel being unspecific about ‘things’. Turns out I could write three novels being vague (hurrah for vagueness!). Also, quite a lot of readers haven’t even noticed the odd missing detail, which says as much about how people read as how people (me at least) write, which is something I find fascinating and could bone on about for ages, but nobody got time for that.

What’s it about rogues that appeals to readers?

Sexeh leather togs? Or maybe it’s that most of us are chickenshits, I know I am. I once accidentally stole a D20 from a games shop. It’s a dull tale, so I’ll spare you the details but in short, I was mortified and felt like a fugitive for days.

People like rogues because they act as surrogates and playact in the safety of our imagination. They practice the behaviours we think might be fun: steal a diamond necklace, hold-up a stagecoach, and generally thumb their noses at authority. But of course, we know these acts ultimately lead to censure and disgrace within the confines of our civil society. So, we live out our darker, more anarchic fantasies in safety through the actions of these types of characters. Characters that if you encountered them in real life you would most likely cross the street to avoid. They take the risks and let off our metaphoric steam so that we don’t go to real jail – in my opinion. That’s the short answer but I swear, after a few pints it gets much more convoluted and intricate, full of big words and philosophical quotes.

Breed seems pretty angry most of the time. Why do you torture your characters so?

Torture is such a harsh word; I prefer ‘test’. It’s a fair point that during this story Breed is quite miffed. I assure you, before the story began Breed was entirely sanguine and just got on with being a thug, all nice and quiet like. Alas, drama is conflict. We meet Breed when Breed is having a really bad run of luck.

If you weren’t writing, what else would you be doing?

Cooking meth. I hear there’s good money to be made. Or making theatrical props which was the main day job before I started writing in earnest. I also work in the family engineering firm.

How have you found the journey into print? What would you do differently?

Depressing, infuriating, frustrating, all the things ending in -ing. What would I do differently? Many things. I wouldn’t second guess myself, I wouldn’t take things so personally, and I wouldn’t waste as much time as I’ve wasted. To coin a phrase, I’d get on the pot and start pissing straight away.

Why fantasy? Has fantasy made a comeback?

Fantasy is my first love. Like a baby goose I imprinted on the first genre I read, which was fantasy. It is the language of myth, of us. I write about life, things that interest me, and much like the renowned interviewer Philomena Cunk, I ponder things like, ‘why is spaghetti?’. Much like mother’s milk, fantasy provides all the metaphors a growing smart-arse could wish for. I don’t think fantasy has ever gone away.

Where’s the best place to start with your work?

The beginning! I have a couple of short story/novellas on my website http://kdavies.net that will give people a taste of what the Chronicles of Breed are about and indeed, gauge their tolerance for bad language. Or they can dive right in and buy Dangerous to Know here http://kdavies.net/adtk . It’s also available as an audio book on most platforms.

What’s next for you?

Breed’s story might have come to an end, for now, but there are a couple of other characters in Dangerous to Know who had unfinished business of their own.

Tell us a bit about yourself.

I live in the Midlands, I have a couple of kids, four dogs, a cat, and an understanding partner. I play with swords, axes, and throwing knives – no log is safe! I occasionally LARP and when the weather is inclement I also play MMORPGs.

Chronicles of Breed can be purchased directly from kdavies.net, as well as other places where you can obtain good books.

PENNYWORTH is a brand-new DC show charting the untold origin story of a 26-year-old Alfred Pennyworth in 1960s London. STARBURST sat down with titular star JACK BANNON, BEN ALDRIDGE as Thomas Wayne and PALOMA FAITH, who plays the villain Bet Sykes, to talk about Batman’s enduring appeal, straying from the expected, and building a new world from the ground up…

STARBURST: What drew you to your respective characters, and to the show itself?

Jack Bannon: Like anything else, it was an email from the agent. I read the synopsis of what the show was going to be and I thought, “Oh, this is a bit strange!”. They sent the pilot script along with the request for an audition tape, so I read the script and that’s what really got me, because it was everything that I thought a comic book TV show isn’t. Page 3 of the script had a big description of this dark version of London where it was set, and [creator] Bruno [Heller] clearly had some incredible ideas. And from that moment I knew this was something a bit different.

Ben Aldridge: I think if you hear the words, “it’s a comic book spin-off” you think – not that there’s anything wrong with those TV shows – but Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. and Gotham, which are set in a more modern world and follow a more obvious route. And when I first opened the script, I was like “Okay, I wonder if it’s going to be like that.” And then it wasn’t – it was weird, twisted, with lots of amazing pop culture references, in a very dark and dangerous world that was like a violent, espionage thriller. I just knew anything could happen here, and they’re building a totally new world that we haven’t even seen in the comic books. So this is going to be very original, whatever it is.

Paloma Faith: For me as well, the fact that my character was a villain, the female villain that wasn’t just scary because of her sexuality. She had a lot more going for her than that, a lot more layers. I think Bruno cleverly plays with the idea of power, because power is often about the psychology of those around you. For example, as a kid, I was terrified of my own father. Then I had a period of time when I didn’t see my father, and when I did see him again, he just seemed small to me. It was really strange, because in my mind he was huge. And what’s great about this is that Bruno asks, why can’t women be the most powerful? Just because she’s not the strongest or the biggest, she is one of the most powerful people on screen and it’s nothing to do with physicality, it’s to do with how far she’s willing to go.

Jack Bannon as Alfred Pennyworth

And it’s interesting because she’s not purely a villain, you do see she has strong relationships and changing allegiances.

Paloma Faith: And the relationships develop in the show so that some enemies become friends and some friends become enemies. It’s not as black and white as good and evil.

Ben Aldridge: Yeah, what the show wanted to do was to not make it obvious who the good people are and who the bad people are; the lines are blurred. You’ve got the supposed good people making bad decisions for what they think is the greater good, which spirals into people dying.  The audience has to learn that the lines are quite blurred.

Which is different because a lot of superhero films do tend to be more black and white. Was it interesting to be technically part of the superhero canon, but to have the freedom of a show that feels more self-contained?

Jack Bannon: To put it crudely, we get all the benefits of the DC badge but then we do what we fucking like. I think it’s interesting because for me, the world in which it’s set is one of the strongest things about it. We know what Gotham and Metropolis look like, but there hasn’t been a London yet. We can do anything here, which was attractive.

Ben Aldridge: It makes it really unpredictable. Even being in it you’re always sure what the background is going to consist of, like a group of nuns running through the back or, when the director put this little pig in a pram running through one of our scenes, and we were like, “What?!”.

Paloma Faith: When I spoke to the writers, they said that they didn’t want anyone knowing too much about the premise, because they wanted it to be a standalone thing. They didn’t want to ham it up or to have it be super self-aware of the fact it’s DC.

Ben Aldridge as Thomas Wayne

And considering this is the origin story of characters that we know and love, while also being completely untold, did you do much research into previous incarnations of your characters? Or did you want to start fresh?

Jack Bannon: Well I did a bit, because we had a conversation before I even got the job, where my first audition was essentially a terrible Michael Caine impression. And I kept getting called back so I had to tell them I wasn’t going to keep doing this terrible impression, but wanted to know if it was along the right lines. And Bruno explained that Michael Caine had said he’d play a butler only as long as he was ex-SAS. So he was the one who gave us the backstory, so if there were any previous Alfred’s we were giving a nod to, it would be him.

Ben Aldridge: Obviously Thomas Wayne just dies, that’s how everyone knows him. So I watched a montage of all his deaths.

Jack Bannon: Which one was the best death?

Ben Aldridge: Actually, even though they weren’t good films, I think the one in Batman v. Superman where Jeffrey Dean Morgan plays him. So after that, I looked at some of the comics and saw he was always depicted with a moustache. I asked if I could have a moustache, and Bruno and Danny asked if I could grow it in two weeks. Yes I could.

Paloma Faith as Bet Sykes

What’s it like bringing the more human element to the broader DC universe? Because you’ve not got any superheroes, and you don’t even have Batman.

Ben Aldridge: It’s like a character-driven, psychological piece. And that’s the good thing about DC, it can be more about them as humans. And that’s why, being asked why we think Batman is the most popular of all the superheroes, I think it’s because he’s the most relatable, the most human. He decides to be a vigilante, he’s not born with that power. A lot of what drives him is losing his parents, and the need to right that wrong. Everyone can relate to that world.

What’s the fan reaction been like?

Jack Bannon: When the show was first announced, a lot of people where like “Why the fuck do we need a show about the butler, this is stupid!” and then those same people later turned around and said it was brilliant.

Ben Aldridge: I think for TV snobs who might not be into superhero stuff, if they watch the first episode, they might find it’s more in line with their tastes than they expected. It caters to both sets of people, DC fans or not.

PENNYWORTH premieres in the UK on October 25th courtesy of StarzPlay, available on Amazon Prime Video or Apple TV. To read our Season 1 review, click HERE.