While some writers hate equating their stories with specific genres, author Valkyrie Loughcrewe is taking a different approach by classifying their new novella Puppet’s Banquet (paperback, Kindle) with their own genre: “diseased Gothic.”
To find out what they mean, and what inspired and influenced this story, check out the following email interview.
To begin, what is Puppet’s Banquet about, and when and where does it take place?
In a sense, Puppet’s Banquet is about having a tragedy happen to you that cannot neatly fit into any kind of frame of reference for others to relate to, and sort of falling through the cracks of society, of consensus reality, and just having everything you know about yourself and your place in the world unravel.
It takes place in modern Ireland, where a married couple have a chance encounter with a maniacal surgeon who does…something to the husband, and the wife has to travel to this Gothic hospital on a mist shrouded island where anomalous maladies are treated.
Where did you get the idea for Puppet’s Banquet, and how different is the finished story from what you originally conceived?
Well, for the actual book, the initiation came from listening to the band An Axis Of Perdition, and getting the urge to write something that felt like their music. It pretty quickly connected to this old script treatment me and my friend and collaborator Dan Rooney wrote in college. It felt like it was meant to be.
So, is there a reason why you didn’t write the book with Dan?
The book just poured out of me so fast. I sent it to him to get his opinion, but he’s so busy with life at the moment ,and generally just a cool guy who likes art, so his vibe was just like, “that sounds really cool, go for it.”
Also, is there a significance to being about a married couple as opposed to people who are dating or are siblings or are just friends?
Yeah. The affluent but adrift, hapless, and stale hetero catholic married couple is a thing that fascinates me because it feels like such an artifact from the past, and yet people seem to still be doing it all the time. I don’t know how anyone can afford the whole “get a house, have kids, settle down” thing right now, so I wanted to explore a couple like that and take a look at where the foundations might be a little shaky. What happens when two people just sort of find themselves in a life like that, having everything handed to them by rich family connections, and never quite become conscious to the fact that they’re just acting out an imitation of life, living in a mold that they aren’t even particularly enjoying filling.
It sounds like Puppet’s Banquet might be a Gothic horror novel, or a work of weird fiction, or some combination of them and other things.
I call it a “diseased Gothic.” It’s got a lot of Gothic trappings (the cathedral like mysterious hospital on a haunted island being the main thing), and the diseased part comes from the fact that there are a bunch of different ways you can interpret the story and they’ll all be valid, but they’ll never hold together 100%. I made sure to put intentional plot holes in the story that make it so any reading of the text has a wound in it, that can become infected with strange dream-impressions.
Puppet’s Banquet is your fourth book after Crom Cruach, Decrepit Ritual, and Spookshow. Are there any authors, or specific stories, that had a big influence on Puppet’s Banquet but not on anything else you’ve written?
It’s hard for me to really pin down many direct influences right now, but with time I’m sure it will become clear.
I definitely wanted to channel a bit of Ursula Le Guin’s sense of immersion and forward momentum that we get entering A Wizard Of Earthsea. Much like with Crom Cruach, as well, Ted Hughes’ Crow is a big influence.
How about such non-literary influences as movies, TV shows, or games? Was Puppet’s Banquet influenced by any of those things?
An obvious comparison people could make would be to [the atmospheric horror video game] Silent Hill, but really this is inspired in its own way by a lot of the works that inspired Silent Hill: Francis Bacon, David Lynch, strange performance art pieces I’ve seen that use flesh and metal to create horrifying forms.
But the number 1 influence behind this, I think on both me and Daniel’s part, are our dreams. There’s also a little New French Extremity Cinema influence in there. [Pscal Laugier’s 2008 movie] Martyrs was a bit of an influence.
Illustration Credit: Trevor Henderson
Puppet’s Banquet includes illustrations by Trevor Henderson. Did you give him any kind of guidance as to what you wanted, or did you just hand him the text and let him do what he wanted?
Trevor read through the book and began sketching out his impressions. I told him I wanted really eerie images that the reader would want to look away from. I also wanted the art to represent vague and symbolic things in the book or to represent certain characters rather than to depict directly the events of the book. He did about 11 or 12 initial idea drawings. I hope he releases all of them eventually for his own personal projects because they’re all great.
There was some back and forth, I asked for certain changes or made suggestions, and we ended up deciding to combine some of the ideas from different drawings- and we ended up with 5 really strong works from Trevor that really convey the vibe of the book.
When not writing stories, you write music, including death thrash metal as Argento, and industrial electro music as Surgeryhead. Did you ever consider writing Puppet’s Banquet as a concept album? Or do people not do that anymore?
I am certainly no stranger to making concept albums, but since the impetus for actually writing the book came from listening to the band An Axis Of Perdition, I felt that the music was already there.
Now, Hollywood loves to make movies based on horror novels, but they’re not as eager when it comes to weird fiction. Setting aside commercial considerations, do you think Puppet’s Banquet could work as a movie?
Yeah, I think Puppet’s Banquet is probably my most filmable book so far. It doesn’t need the sheer volume of creature effects and locations of Spookshow or Decrepit Ritual, and it doesn’t have Crom Cruach‘s cast of trans characters that could make a film producer balk. Sorry to sound so cynical, but that’s the reality of the film business: you got these people at the top who don’t wanna invest in certain things. You get a small cast of actors, a couple of creature effects and some locations made out of scrap, and you’ve got yourself a movie.
So, is there anything else you think potential readers need to know about Puppet’s Banquet?
I’ve sort of intended the book to be read twice, the first time is this disorienting descent into madness, the second time should really throw some stuff into a different perspective.
Finally, if someone enjoys Puppet’s Banquet, which of your other books would you suggest they check out next?
If you like the experimental style, definitely check out Crom Cruach or Decrepit Ritual next. If you want something a little bigger, with a lot more gore and creature action, Spookshow‘s a big ol’ novel that’s got the goods.
