Dread Reckoning:
An Interview with Ramsey Campbell
"Britain's most respected living horror writer" -Oxford Companion to Literature
A rare and great pleasure in this world is to find a writer who is also a word artist; who eschews formulaic, cookie-cutter-lit; who continues to generously support fellow authors in the field; whose body of work is not only prodigious and original, it is of such influence on so many artists in the last century that we could host an argument on which descriptor best suits, Campbellian or Campbellesque. Yet despite his continued popularity, he retains an always recognisable voice that is uniquely his, and despite his ageing, his works remain as powerful as ever, even more so, as with fine wine.
I give you an exception to the rule that it's not a good idea to meet your heroes in case they disappoint. The multiple-award-winning, "most respected" Ramsey Campbell is not only one of the finest writers working in any genre today, he's also a Major Dude. Without further ado and/or waffle...
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I would like to learn about your writing process. What is it that inspires you to start a work, and how long does it take you? Do you write with a market in mind?
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First comes the idea, sometimes accompanied by potential developments, often unattended by them. I’ve far more ideas than I’ll ever have time to develop. Occasionally an idea may sprout narrative notions almost immediately—Somebody’s Voice was a recent example that proved swiftly fruitful—but often they’ll lie in wait in my notebooks for me to take another look. The Incubations, for instance, was based on notes I’d made about twin towns more than thirty years before I wrote the book; back then I’d been unable to find a route to take. Frequently it’s only when I return to an idea that my subconscious releases its potential.
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A short story will generally require several weeks—days to work out the characters and setting and major events of the tale, followed by most of a fortnight to write it and then a further week or more to rewrite it, which I do with increasingly delighted ruthlessness. A final reading of the rewrite to identify details that can be improved, and off it goes to some market, either eventually or, if I’ve been commissioned, immediately. Except for specific commissions, I write with no market in mind, just the tale itself. All this applies to novels as well, but that entire process will be spread over about a year. I write every day—I’m here at my desk well before seven in the morning. Some folk have praised this as discipline, but I think the main point is that it’s a compulsion.
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What inspired you to first begin writing? Have you always wanted to write?
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Books were the inspiration. I was reading adult fiction at six years old, when my mother let me use her tickets in the local public library. The first book I borrowed was either Great Short Stories of the World (which shocked me with “The Tell-Tale Heart”, but I was just as dismayed by Stephen Crane’s “A Dark-Brown Dog”) or Fifty Years of Ghost Stories, which hit me with Edith Wharton (“Afterward”, which haunted me) and M. R. James (“The Residence at Whitminster”, which gave me waking nightmares for weeks as I lay in bed). Actually, I’d written doggerel a year earlier, but pretty soon I set about imitating SF (Simak’s City) and supernatural horror (bits of any number of stories I’d read, however haphazardly assembled). From trying to convince myself I was as good as my reading (of course I wasn’t, and however mature the reading was, the writing exposed my immaturity, as writing will) I graduated to attempting to pay back some of the pleasure the field had given me. I still am.
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What do you think of the opinion that horror has to be graphic to be labelled "horror"?
It’s reductive nonsense that even a cursory glance at the range of the field would refute, and I’ve devoted much of my writing career to proving it wrong as best I can. My view was shaped by anthologies I read when young, edited by the likes of Dorothy L. Sayers and Basil Davenport and John Keir Cross, all of whom seem to have been committed to demonstrating the literary qualities of the field and how it frequently shows up in the mainstream. Cross included Herman Melville’s “Bartleby” in Best Horror Stories and commented that many readers might not regard it as horror. At eleven years old I didn’t find it out of place, and I think this greatly extended my concept of horror to include disquiet and unease, first in my reading and later in my own work.
Do you have a favourite length to work in e.g. short story, novella, novel?
If I had to favour one it would be the novel, which of all of them gathers the most momentum and energy and gives most scope for invention, as well as having the greatest capacity to surprise me in the writing. But I relish all of them—whichever form is most appropriate to the idea: how substantial the material is dictates the form.
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Do you use pen and paper, computer, laptop, typewriter?
First drafts of fiction are almost always longhand, written with a basic Parker pen (though a very few—“A Street was Chosen”, for instance—were done straight onto the computer because the material made it appropriate, indeed necessary). I tend to let the first drafts sprawl as I discover the material in the process of writing. Rewriting is onto the computer, and increasingly ruthless, an approach in which I delight—I only regret not having settled on it earlier in my career.
Do you work alone or in coffee shops?
Alone for many years (though Jenny is my first reader and commentator). Back in the sixties, when I worked in the civil service, I was able to write at my desk in the midst of all sorts of office activity: “The Cellars”, for instance, was composed in that fashion. At the turn of the century, however, when (having temporarily sunk into a financial trough) I went to work in the Borders bookshop in Cheshire Oaks, I found I couldn’t write in the lunchtime breaks in the café while we were setting up the shop, and so I was forced to take several weeks out of The Darkest Part of the Woods. I always write every day until a first draft is completed, but luckily was able to return to that one after the enforced hiatus without, I hope, the interruption being apparent to the reader.
Do you keep a pad on your bedside stand, or rely on memory? Or perhaps use voice recordings to email to yourself?
Never rely on memory to retain a literary idea—I say this both as my practice and as advice. I don’t believe (as some colleagues appear to) that if you forget it it wasn’t worth having. For many years I carried notebooks before I started using my phone for dictation (though unnervingly frequently I watch it correctly transcribe what I said and then decide I meant something else). Notebooks do indeed still occupy the bedside table, and often enough I use them or the recorder function in the night.
Do you work in silence or to music?
Silence, these days. When we moved to this house in 1985 and the room I’m in became my workroom I used to play Renaissance music on the stereo, but nothing later (Bach would have been ecstatically distracting, for instance). Soon I stopped, though. I’d rather concentrate on music when I’m listening to it.
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What do you think of AI used for writing? (let me guess)
A terse and vulgar phrase.
What are your favourite movies/documentaries/inspirations?
Films—well, here’s the list I sent in last time Sight and Sound did such a survey:
La Grande Illusion. The most potent of anti-war films, and considerably more—an epitome of Renoir’s humanism.​
Hangmen Also Die. Quintessential paranoid Fritz Lang, which demonstrates without trivialising the historical context that Mabuse’s world was and is ours.​
Letter from an Unknown Woman. An inexhaustibly rich film, the epitome of eloquent succinctness.​
Los Olvidados. Extreme neorealism embraces surrealism, and Buñuel’s power to shock remains as vital as ever.​
Singin’ in the Rain. A great musical, a great comedy, a great film about film (and not just the coming of sound).​
Ugetsu. Mizoguchi’s contemplative style at its most expressively Bruegelesque, further enriched by the uncanny.​
Touch of Evil. A late masterpiece, as brilliant and searching as Kane.​
Vertigo. Hitchcock’s most disturbing and beautiful film, more so than ever in 4K. An essay could be written on his use of the colour green alone. A film as confessional as it is confrontational.​
Wild Strawberries. Not as close to austere perfection as other Bergman films, but his most moving.​
My Neighbour Totoro. The gentlest of redemptive fantasies—like Kurosawa’s Ikiru, which it is otherwise utterly unlike, it renews the soul. A recent survey of films for the young suggested it was just for toddlers. Thank Miyazaki I haven’t grown up that much.
Lord, just ten films - quite a task. They're listed in the order of release. Films I was dismayed were crowded out include Les Vampires, Les Croix de Bois, Make Way for Tomorrow, Bringing Up Baby, Sons of the Desert, Citizen Kane (on the basis of only one film per director), The Reckless Moment (likewise), Ikiru, The Night of the Hunter, Ordet, The Apu Trilogy, Night of the Demon, The Searchers, Last Year in Marienbad, Grave of the Fireflies, Code Unknown, The Koker Trilogy... I fancy other contributors may favour some.
Documentaries: Nuit et Brouillard, O Dreamland, À propos de Nice, Las Hurdes, F for Fake, Point of Order, The Gleaners, Gimme Shelter, Salesman, Shoah—all these come to mind.
Inspirations—I love the cinema but rarely find literary inspiration there (unless you count tales of mine such as Ancient Images and The Grin of the Dark). Come to think, the Three Stooges show up in various tales as a precursor of the book (Six Stooges and Counting) I wrote about them. And I confess to lifting images from Carnival of Souls (the face at the vehicle window) and The Manster (the lolling second head) to incorporate in Incarnate.
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Do you ever write in a different discipline, say, a play, or poetry?
I once wrote a minute play. It wasn’t good. Poetry? I don’t know. You decide.
Could the method of naming be wrong
That makes us refer to King Kong?
Though that gigantic ape
May well cause us to gape,
Far too teeny to spot is its dong.
And
You may think that the doctor is odd
When he counsels you never to nod.
But should you fall asleep
Then upon you will creep
Your double popped forth from a pod.
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Brilliant - Invasion of the Body Snatchers! On the basis of these, maybe someday we can get you to write a clerihew or tew... Favourite writers and/or inspirations?
My great inspiration is Jenny, without whom I would never have succeeded. Writers: Lovecraft for structural excellence and careful modulation of prose; M. R. James for incomparable succinctness in summoning dread; Nabokov for relish of language, narrative inventiveness, obliqueness of approach and so much more; Graham Greene for evocative economy of expression, the product of a career devoted to refining his style. Then there’s Machen (“The White People”) and Blackwood (“The Willows”) and Fritz Leiber (the seminal "Smoke Ghost") as well so many others I’ve striven to emulate. I just hope the result has a little personality of its own.
I think your books have more than a little “own” personality, which is why I've enjoyed them since first borrowing Demons by Daylight with its wonderful teal and red cover (in company with The Dunwich Horror and Others, cover illustrated by Lee Brown Coye), from the Tonawanda NY public library. Long may they continue!
I have one additional question gleaned from re-reading the introduction to your collection Ghosts & Grisly Things in which I came across this moving passage:
‘“See How They Run” was written for an anthology about psychopaths edited by my old, and now lamented, friend Robert Bloch… Not many days before Bob died I was able to speak to him on the phone for half an hour and tell him he was loved. He told me that he was able to see a pattern in his life. I hope I shall in mine.’
Thus I wondered if you have now seen your own pattern?
I'd say not yet. Perhaps when I look down from a height on this decrepit old bag of flesh as well as back at the memories gathered therein, I shall.
But not before many more years of fine literature to come. Thank you, Ramsey, from the bottom of my heart for taking time to do this interview, and all continued success and good health to you and yours.​
Buy Ramsey's books via his Amazon Author page
The Ramsey Campbell Archive, University of Liverpool
Visit Ramsey's Haunted Domain (if you dare!)
The Wise Friend at Audible
Buy Ramsey's books via PS Publishing
Ramsey Campbell
(born 4 January 1946) needs no introduction. He is an English horror fiction writer, editor and critic who has been writing for over sixty years. He is the author of over 30 novels and hundreds of short stories, many of them winners of literary awards. Three of his novels have been adapted into films. He is celebrated as one of the most significant and award-winning horror authors of all time, having won multiple World Fantasy, British Fantasy, and Bram Stoker Awards, as well as receiving Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Horror Writers Association and the World Fantasy Convention. In 2015 Campbell was given an Honourable Fellowship by Liverpool John Moores University; the Ramsey Campbell Archive for studies of the author's work is available via University of Liverpool.
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Since he first came to prominence in the mid-1960s, critics have cited Campbell as one of the leading writers in his field: T.E.D. Klein has written that "Campbell reigns supreme in the field today", and Robert Hadji has described him as "perhaps the finest living exponent of the British weird fiction tradition", while S. T. Joshi stated, "Future generations will regard him as the leading horror writer of our generation, every bit the equal of Lovecraft or Blackwood." In a 2021 appreciation of his collected works, The Washington Post said: "Taken together, they constitute one of the monumental accomplishments of modern popular fiction." The acclaimed author Peter Straub noted: "Horrors in (Campbell's) fiction are never merely invented, they are felt and experienced, and affect the reader for days afterward."
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The author has two children, Tamsin and Matthew, and resides in Merseyside with his wife (and first reader/commentator) Jenny (Chandler) aka "the better half of me".
(Partial biography from Wikipedia)
Bibliography
Novels
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The Doll Who Ate His Mother (1976; revised text, 1985)
The Face That Must Die (expurgated version 1979; restored text: 1983)
The Parasite (1980; published in the US with a different ending as To Wake the Dead)
The Nameless (1981; filmed in 1999 as The Nameless)
The Claw (1983; also known as Night of the Claw; written as Jay Ramsay)
Incarnate (1983)
Obsession (1985; written under the working title For the Rest of Their Lives)
The Hungry Moon (1986; written under the working title Blind Dark)
The Influence (1988; filmed in 2019 as La Influencia)
Ancient Images (1989)
Midnight Sun (1990)
The Count of Eleven (1991)
The Long Lost (1993)
The One Safe Place (1995)
The House on Nazareth Hill (1996; also known as Nazareth Hill)
The Last Voice They Hear (1998)
Silent Children (2000)
Pact of the Fathers (2001; filmed in 2002 as Second Name)
The Darkest Part of the Woods (2003)
The Overnight (2004)
Secret Stories (2005; abridged US edition, Secret Story, 2006)
The Grin of the Dark (2007)
Thieving Fear (2008)
Creatures of the Pool (2009)
The Seven Days of Cain (2010)
Ghosts Know (2011)
The Kind Folk (2012)
Think Yourself Lucky (2014)
Thirteen Days by Sunset Beach (2015)
The Searching Dead (2016) (Book One of The Three Births of Daoloth)
Born to the Dark (2017) (Book Two of The Three Births of Daoloth)
The Way of the Worm (2018) (Book Three of The Three Births of Daoloth)
The Wise Friend (2020)
Somebody's Voice (2021)
Fellstones (2022)
The Lonely Lands (2023)
The Incubations (2024)
An Echo of Children (2025)
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Novelisations
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The Bride of Frankenstein (1977; of the 1935 film, written as Carl Dreadstone)
Dracula's Daughter (1977; of the 1936 film, written as Carl Dreadstone)
The Wolf Man (1977; of the 1941 film, written as Carl Dreadstone)
Solomon Kane (2010; of the 2009 film)
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Novellas
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Medusa (1987; published standalone; later collected in Strange Things and Stranger Places)
Needing Ghosts (1990; published standalone; later collected in Strange Things and Stranger Places)
The Last Revelation of Gla'aki (2013)
The Pretence (2013)
The Booking (2016)
The Enigma of the Flat Policeman (A Little Green Book of Grins & Gravity) (2020)
The Village Killings (2021; original contribution to the collection The Village Killings & Other Novellas)
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Collections
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The Inhabitant of the Lake and Less Welcome Tenants (1964, as J. Ramsey Campbell; reprinted 2011 with bonus material, under its intended title, as The Inhabitant of the Lake and Other Unwelcome Tenants as by Ramsey Campbell)
Demons by Daylight (1973)
The Height of the Scream (1976)
Dark Companions (1982)
Cold Print (1985; expanded edition 1993. Contains stories from The Inhabitant of the Lake as well as later material in the Lovecraft vein)
The Tomb Herd and Others (1986, issue #43 of Crypt of Cthulhu. Contains the stories omitted from Cold Print. All Mythos, including two early versions of his stories and two versions of a story set on Tond.)
Night Visions 3 (1986. Contains stories by Campbell, Clive Barker and Lisa Tuttle)
Black Wine (1986. Contains stories by Campbell and Charles L. Grant)
Ghostly Tales (1987, issue #50 of Crypt of Cthulhu. (Consists of Campbell's juvenilia as of 1958, with drawings by him to illustrate the stories. Of note is the story "The Hollow in the Woods" because it features Shoggoths, and thus can be considered a Mythos effort.)
Dark Feasts: The World of Ramsey Campbell (1987) (The entire contents of this collection except "The Whining" can be found in Alone With the Horrors. The true first edition was printed in an edition of only 300 copies and most were recalled due to a printer's error on p. 233, making it a rarity; a corrected printing was issued.)
Scared Stiff: Tales of Sex and Death (1987)
Waking Nightmares (1991)
Alone with the Horrors (1993) (see full entry for variant contents).
Strange Things and Stranger Places (1993)
Tales from Merseyside (1995) (An audio collection (cassette only) released by Necronomicon Press in conjunction with A-typical Productions. Running time 1 hr 30 mins, read by the author. Stories are: "The Companion"; "Calling Card"; "The Guide"; "Out of the Woods".)
Far Away & Never (1996 - republished 2021)
Ghosts and Grisly Things (1998)
Told by the Dead (2003)
Inconsequential Tales (2008)
Just Behind You (2009)
Holes for Faces (2013)
Visions from Brichester (2015)
Limericks of the Alarming and Phantasmal (2016)
By the Light of My Skull (2018)
The Companion & Other Phantasmagorical Stories (2019)
The Retrospective & Other Phantasmagorical Stories (2020)
Masters of the Weird Tale: Ramsey Campbell, Vols. 1 & 2 (2020)
The Village Killings & Other Novellas (2021)
Exploring Dark Fiction #6: A Primer to Ramsey Campbell (2021)
Fearful Implications (2023)​​​​
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As Editor
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Superhorror (also known as The Far Reaches of Fear) (1976)
New Terrors (published in US as two separate volumes, New Terrors 1 and New Terrors 2) (1980)
New Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos (1980)
The Gruesome Book (1983)
Fine Frights: Stories That Scared Me (1988)
Best New Horror (with Stephen Jones) (1990)
Best New Horror 2 (with Stephen Jones) (1991)
Best New Horror 3 (with Stephen Jones) (1992)
Uncanny Banquet (1992)
Best New Horror 4 (with Stephen Jones) (1993)
Deathport (1993)
Best New Horror 5 (with Stephen Jones) (1994)
Meddling With Ghosts: Stories in the Tradition of M.R. James (2002)
Gathering the Bones (with Jack Dann and Dennis Etchison) (2003)
The Folio Book of Horror Stories (2018)
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Critical Studies
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Allart, Patrice (2017). Psychose à Arkham—Les Itinéraires de Robert Bloch et Ramsey Campbell. L'Œil du Sphinx.
Ashley, Michael (1980). Fantasy Reader's Guide to Ramsey Campbell. Borgo Press.
Campbell, Ramsey; Dziemanowicz, Stefan; and Joshi, S. T. (1995). The Core of Ramsey Campbell: A Bibliography & Reader's Guide. Necronomicon Press.
Cooke, Jon B., ed. (1991). Tekeli-li! Journal of Terror 3 (special Ramsey Campbell number).
Crawford, Gary William (1985). "Urban Gothic: The Fiction of Ramsey Campbell", in Darrell Schweitzer, ed., Discovering Modern Horror Fiction. Starmont House. Pp. 13–20.
——— (1988). Ramsey Campbell, Starmont House.
———, ed. (2014). Ramsey Campbell: Critical Essays on the Modern Master of Horror. Studies in Supernatural Literature). Scarecrow Press.
Fry, Gary (2015). "A New Place to Hyde: Self and Society in Ramsey Campbell's Think Yourself Lucky, in SJ Bagley and Simon Strantzas, eds., Thinking Horror Volume 1. TKHR, pp. 25-35.
Hatavara, Mari & Toikkanen, Jarkko (2019) "Sameness and difference in narrative modes and narrative sense making: The Case of Ramsey Campbell's 'The Scar' ", in Frontiers of Narrative Studies, Vol.5, issue 1.
Joshi, S. T. (2001). The Modern Weird Tale. McFarland & Co.
——— (2009). Classics and Contemporaries: Some Notes on Horror Fiction. Hippocampus Press.
——— (2001). Ramsey Campbell and Modern Horror Fiction. Liverpool University Press.
———, ed. (1994). The Count of Thirty. Necronomicon Press.
———, (2021) Ramsey Campbell: Master of Weird Fiction, PS Publishing.
Menegaldo, Giles (1996). "Gothic Convention and Modernity in John Ramsay [sic] Campbell's Short Fiction", in Victor Sage and Allan Lloyd Smith, eds. Modern Gothic: A Reader. Manchester University Press. pp. 189–97.
O'Sullivan, Keith M. C. (2023). Ramsey Campbell. University of Wales Press.
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Awards
Among Ramsay Campbell's trove of awards, too numerous to list here, he's a multiple winner & nominee of the British Fantasy Award's "August Derleth Award" - a full list can be found
Cover art from 2018 edition of Midnight Sun, published in e-book format by Lume Books, PNGified by Marni Scofidio