FEATURED AUTHOR

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Willie Meikle is a forty something Scotsman. He has sold over 150 stories
in the horror genre press, the best of which are collected in "The Johnson
Amulet and Other Scottish Terrors" (currently available at on-line
bookstores), He has a novel "Island Life" coming in Octover 2001 from
Barclay Books, and has recently becoming Contributiong Editor at
WritingNow.com.

Duncan McKenzie is a marine biologist working on a small, sparsely
populated, island in the Scottish Outer Hebrides. The island has an
indigenous population of only six people except for a team of archaeology
students who are opening up what seems to be an early Neolithic burial
mound. Two lighthouse keepers, Dick, a young trainee and Tom, an old hand
with many years of experience, are disturbed in their work by the
appearance of a dazed female student, badly traumatized and bruised. The
student tells of the slaughter of the rest of her party by something that
they have released from the burial mound. Soon everyone the three men know
is either missing or dead and there are things moving in the fog. Large,
hulking, unholy things with a taste for human flesh. Then the fun starts in earnest.

Island Life will be available in October 2001 from Barclay Books.


When did you first start writing?

I've written as long as I can remember. Back in my teen-age years it was
song lyrics more than fiction. I wanted to be a rock star. Who didn't? But
I lacked one thing -- talent. Then the rat race got me for a long time, and
it wasn't until I was in my thirties that I started again seriously. I'd
been prevaricating for a while unsure of whether I had any ability. Finally
my wife pushed me into it - she bought me an Amstrad word processing system
and tied me to it until I wrote something. I'll be forever grateful for
that push.

Why do you write?

All my work starts with an image, like a photograph. It arrives in my head,
then starts to run like a movie, and the story builds from there. Sometimes
the image is from the end of a story, and I have to run it backwards, but
everything is done visually at the start. The most recent example was a
lighthouse on an island. The lighthouse had a neolithic burial ground at
its base. I started to wonder who would live in the lighthouse and what was
under the standing stones, and a story began to run. That turned into my
latest novel, and, as a bonus, the publisher has agreed to my picture of
the lighthouse being used on the cover, so it has come full circle.
I find story ideas coming at me at any time, anywhere, as if someone is
e-mailing pictures straight into my brain. I write them all down in a
notebook that never leaves my side, and sometimes one of them gathers a bit
more depth, and I get a clearer image. At this stage I find myself thinking
about it almost constantly, until a plot, or an ending, clarifies itself.
Once I've written down where the story should be going it quietens down a
bit. Then, if I find myself still thinking about it a couple of days later,
I'll probably start writing the actual story. At any given time I have
about 20 ideas waiting for clarity, two or three of which might end up as
finished works.

What sort of books do you like to read?

As a youth, I read a lot of "Pulp" fiction -- Edgar Rice Burroughs,
H.P.Lovecraft, H. Rider Haggard, and Sax Rohmer. Then I discovered, about
the age of 15, the so-called New-Wave writers. Since then I've followed the
careers of Ursula Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Harlan Ellison and, until he
passed on, Roger Zelazny. I've found recently that I'm cycling back to more
epic themes. I'm greatly enamored with a new series by George R.R.Martin,
"The Song of Ice and Fire," which is shaping up to be the biggest, and
probably the best, fantasy work ever. I also read some crime, and
traditional ghost stories. And on the horror side, I still read Stephen
King, Dean Koontz, and Anne Rice but not quite as voraciously.

Who is your favourite author or who has influenced your writing?

My favourite changes every couple of years. It used to be Ray Bradbury,
then Tolkein, then Stephen King, then Roger Zelazny. But the one constant
is actually not a horror author at all. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe
novels have me addicted. I love all the smart dialogue, loose women and
laconic one-liners -in my head I'm Humphrey Bogart. And the stripped down
style of crime-noir is something I try to bring to my own work.

If you could meet any character from a book, who would it be and why?

I'd like to meet God, and ask the question "Why?" back at him. If that's
not allowed, I'd take Frankenstein's monster. I'd like to know what it was
like to arrive fully formed as an adult without a lifetime of experience to
fall back on.

What are you currently working on?

I'm currently working on a historical vampire trilogy, set in Scotland and
northern England during the 1745 Jacobite rebellion. It's all redcoat
armies, hordes of swarming vamps and huge battles. Think Zulu, or Starship
Troopers with vampires and you'll get an idea of it. I've finished book one
and I'm more than halfway through book two. If any publishers or agents are
reading, the first book is available anytime you want it :)

What have you found to be the best way to promote your book(s)?

Word of mouth. Get somebody to read your work, and tell others about it.
There's really no better way. You can work your socks off telling people
how great you are, and you can post your book details all over the web,
like I have. But you won't start selling books until people start reading
your work and realising they like it enough to tell their friends about it.
I've found that using my newsletter to give away samples of my work has
been an effective way to get readers started.

And finally, what advice would you have for writers starting out?

Make it new. If you can write and tell a new story, then it will sell. A
lot of people can write, but they make the mistake of telling stories that
editors have already read a hundred times. Remember, if you've heard a
similar story before, an editor will have heard it too. It amazes me how
many would-be writers profess not to read much. The way to write a story
that will appeal to an editor is to read everything you can get your hands
on, then write something you haven't read about yet. It sounds simple put
that way, doesn't it?


For more information on Willie and his books, please visit his website:

Willie Meikle
http://www.willie.meikle.btinternet.co.uk