THE EXILE ON MAY STREET
Part Two : In Pursuit of the Genuinely Sickening
by
Simon Wady

Last issue, Steve Harris spoke about his problems getting Black Rock accepted by a publisher, and how he’d written one novel that was “too nasty to publish”. This issue, Steve talks to Simon Wady about that book, The Switch, and his new novel, The Devil On May Street.

We’re out walking Steve’s dogs. Only one of them, however, actually belongs to him: the lovely Cindy. The other one, Steve has adopted - or rather the dog adopted him. His name is Dookie, next door’s mongrel, who has to wear a muzzle whenever he goes out because he’s known to attack other dogs, policemen and postmen. His temperament is testimony to his sad upbringing, along with the bumps on one of his front legs where a vet reckons Dookie was chucked against a wall with enough force to snap his leg like a twig.
But Dookie loves Steve and Steve loves Dookie. Loves him enough, in fact, to give him a starring role in his latest novel, The Devil On May Street (Victor Gollancz, £16.99).
Dookie isn’t the only thing in Steve’s life that appears in the book. The wasteground that we’re walking on is where Stevie Warner and Johnny Kane ride Stevie’s old Honda 50; where they smoke cigarettes and discover dirty mags and where they cross over to May Street.
‘That,’ says Steve, pointing to a row of houses, ‘is May Street.’
May Street once ran beneath our feet, but most of the houses were knocked down years ago. There is no Number 52 - that features predominantly in the novel. Much to the relief of the remaining residents considering the delicate state of the housing market.
We continue walking, passing the play area where “gobblings” hide out under the rubber mats, while Steve explains the roots of the novels.
‘I’d been thinking about people that were in a poor condition in certain ways because of something their parents did or didn’t do to them during their childhood. It seems that these little things - sometimes, not so little - stay with a person for the rest of their lives. It shapes that person into what they are, and gives that person all sorts of hang-ups and problems which don’t really come into play until they reach maturity and start to have problems that you can trace back.
‘I thought it would be nice to write something using that idea as a central core. A sort of sins of the father thing - which I’ve never really understood. I’ve spoken to some religious people about it and it’s never got any clearer to me what it means.
‘But you put it into the context of one’s parents, you can start to see some sense in it because whatever they did - not necessarily to you; I’m not talking beatings or anything like that - does shape the person that you become. I wanted to address that in a book and, basically, magnify it. I didn’t just want someone who was never home from work, but someone who’s parents did something extreme. I mean, what would it be like if your parents were murderers? How would that affect your view of your father? How would that shape your life?’
By now, we’ve left the playing area and wasteground behind, and we’re heading through the streets and alleyways back towards Steve’s home. He stops to show me the house, where in the back garden, a boy once vanished into thin air while on a swing. But that’s another story. Read the book and you’ll find out.
With so much of the surrounding area integral to narrative, is there a bit of Steve’s life thrown in as well? ‘Everything in the entire book is true,’ he says and laughs. ‘No, I used to hang round with people pretty much like Andy Warner and the others. And there is some local history in the book as well. There’s a scene in the book where someone gets thrown through the window of a pub called The Pear Tree. That actually happened to a guy I knew. They were very, very interesting times.’
Authors are known for putting a bit of themselves into characters. Did Steve favour one character above the rest? ‘There’s some of me in Stevie Warner because of the dog thing. His views on dogs are pretty much my views about dogs. He’s also a cowardly-custard, which I am. There’s quite a lot of me in Andy Warner too. The obsessive behaviour for instance. But there’s not a lot of me in Johnny Kane. I’m not the daredevil, stand on the railway track type of person. Though that incident is true and taken from my youth. I had a friend stand on the electric rail.’
With that, we’re back at Steve’s house, where he puts the kettle on for tea and settles down to tell me about the pursuit of the genuinely sickening.

While Steve was having trouble placing Black Rock with a publisher (see last issue for the full details), he sat down to work on a new novel, The Switch. His intention was to write a more straight-forward book than Black Rock, that had once been rejected for too sophisticated.
‘Black Rock isn’t really a blood’n’gore, nasty nasty book. I wanted to do something that was a genuine horror novel. I wanted to do something that would horrify; a genuinely nasty, horrific, sickening horror novel that would come as close to transferring the pain to the reader as you could get.
‘And everyone thought it was horrendous. They said it was misogynistic. They said it was sick. They said it was a literary snuff movie.’
But extreme fiction does sell. Hutson and Laymon lay it thick when they want. ‘The Switch is worse than your average Laymon because it hurts to read it. If you identify with the characters, and the characters are good in it, you’re going to hurt when they get hurt.
‘There are some scenes in Richard Laymon books that have been pretty well executed. In fact, he had scalping in one of his I read, and I’ve got a scalping in The Switch, and I thought: “Why do they let him publish this stuff when I can’t?” But, I suppose, it’s because all the way through The Switch it’s tougher than a Laymon.’
Does that mean that Laymon is a safe read? ‘They’re good natured books. He has a nice open, easy-going style to read. They’re the sort of thing I’d expect people in their mid-to-late-teens to read because there’s nothing very taxing in them. They’re good entertainment and he does come up with some nice little nasty bits now and again. But you know everything is going to end okay. People are going to get killed off but they’re not the important people.
‘It’s a different aspect of the way I tried to do approach it. Which was to make you care about the people and not want them to get hurt, and then have to get hurt with them when they did get hurt.’
Is it a book to be proud of then? ‘Yes. I think I achieved everything I set out to do with that novel. Unfortunately, it back-fired on me because it’s too tough for the publisher’s stomachs.’
But surely, horror fiction should be about breaking taboos. ‘No, horror fiction isn’t allowed to break taboos. I’m sorry; it’s not allowed. The publishers say so.
‘I’ve spoken to several other British horror writers that think political correctness is creeping in over here - just as the Yanks have got fed-up with it and got nasty again. The Brits are catching up with being inoffensive and not saying anything out turn.
‘But who is pushing back the boundaries? Nobody is! The last person to even come close was Clive Barker with some of his Books of Blood stories - and the majority of those weren’t even that ground-breaking.
‘There’s Joe Lansdale - who is another person that is sat on and not made much of. Who, in my opinion, should be a lot more important than he is because he genuinely does go for it. He does go for ground-breaking, big issues. I mean, the racism in a Joe Lansdale story - for instance - can really whack you in the face. He’s not condoning it. That’s how people are. It’s not politically correct. I love his stuff!
‘With The Switch, it’s not a matter of condoning a misogynistic view - like has been said - because I’m not putting across a misogynistic point of view. The guy in the book torture, kills and dismembers a woman and wants to do it to another one.
‘You can’t really argue against that. That happens in life. You don’t have deranged killers that are politically correct.’
But the “woman in peril” is a horror staple. ‘I think that though the majority of the book is a woman in peril, that’s not the problem. It’s the fact that the opening chapter deals with a guy torturing a girl to death in a hotel room, and then Chapter 3 is the disposing of the body with a mincer, a collection of sharp instruments and some Drano. I think that that is where the real problem lies.’
But, there are some extremely tough scenes in The Devil On May Street, including various attacks on women. What was acceptable about these? ‘It’s a mystery to me why people will object to one thing and not object to another. I can only assume that because The Devil On May Street isn’t primarily focused on the violence and the sex. It’s focused on betrayal and temptation, and the violence is secondary. Where as, in The Switch, the book is about the violence.’
Considering the problem caused by The Switch, did you expect any similar backlash with The Devil On May Street? ‘I thought that people might object to things like the needle thing because a lot of people have a real fear of needles. I’m not a big one for sticking needles in my arm. And the sacrifice with the needle is quite a lengthy scene.
‘I thought people might object to the fly-in-the-ointment, Raymond’s attack on Janie - which is in the same chapter as his attack on Katie and David, where he tries to suffocate David to make Katie stab herself. That was pretty violent - as are the scenes in the car with David and Jackie, where Raymond is making them cut each other with razors.’
Perhaps the problems lie with the point of view then? In The Switch we share the killer’s delusions; there is no condemnation, just how he sees things. In The Devil On May Street, we share the victim’s point of view. ‘Parts of The Switch are written from the view of the bad guy - most horror books aren’t. I wanted to get inside the head of a guy while he commits a murder. While I was writing it, I was wondering what it must be like to be someone like Dennis Nielsen or Jeffrey Dahmer, and have somebody comatose next to you that you’ve drugged up, and then taken an electric drill and bored a hole down through their skull and poured acid in. All in the hope of that person becoming a kind of zombie for you. What’s going through these people’s minds? What are they hoping to achieve? It’s most alien thing you can think of to do something like that. It beggars belief.
‘So, in The Switch, you’re looking at it from the assailant’s point of view and he’s enjoying what he does. That is probably the crux of the problem with it.’
Also, he is a man-made monster. And people just don’t like to face up to what’s in them. ‘That’s part of it also. Everybody’s got a dark side. We all know about road-rage for instance. We’ve all felt the same way after someone’s cut us up. We’ve wished we’d had a fucking great machine gun stuck on the front of our cars so we could blast that bastard.
‘But we all don’t get out of our cars and beat people up. We’re nice, educated, liberal, middle-class people who don’t do such things. But that side of us is there, though people aren’t very comfortable admitting it. That little demon that actually enjoys it.’

Of course, it’s not all doom and gloom for Steve. The Devil On May Street is in the bookshops now and selling well - and receiving excellent reviews, too. And in November, a limited edition chapbook is being published, a novella called Challenging the Wolf.
Originally written back in 1989, it is now seeing the light the day. How did this come about? ‘I was asked if I had any short fiction that didn’t need to be particularly short. Most of my short fiction is way too long for the market. So I looked around and found I had this story which might do. And it was accepted.’
Before he was a published writer, Steve used to drive a van for an electrical wholesaler. It was after making a delivery to a customer that the idea for the story came about.
‘I used to deliver to this big refrigeration company in Theale, on an industrial estate in the middle of nowhere. When you pulled up there, you had to stop at this portakabin outside, and this security guard would give you a pass to get in.
‘Now this was all fine and dandy, till one day I drove up and the security guard I knew had gone and there was this strange man in his place. This guy had eyebrows that met and little steely eyes, with a ratty face. He looked like he was looking right through you. He wasn’t physically imposing but he was scary basically. He looked like a werewolf.
‘I remember he put out his hand, with the pass in it, on the counter and he didn’t just have hairy hands - you couldn’t even see the skin for the fur! I was scared to put my hand out because this guy was going to grow claws and grab me.
‘I was driving around after, wondering what I could do about him. If he really was a werewolf, then it would be my business to kill him.’ He says this with laugh. ‘But what if he knew that I knew he was a werewolf?’
Is it nice to have some early material made available? ‘Yeah. Parts of it turned out to be a dry run for Adventureland and Wulf. But I do think it’s a nice story - even after all this time. Martin Mckenna has done a great job with the illustrations and people will also get the chance to read - at least part of - The Switch as well.’

Interview originally published in Samhain #64, Oct/Nov 1997.
? Simon Wady.