Here There Be Space Dragons
by J.G. Clay
Greetings
one and all. It’s a pleasure to be here in a virtual sense. For those of you
who have no idea who I am, please allow me to introduce myself. I’m J.G. Clay
-horror writer, geek of some standing and general lad about town. Clarissa has
very kindly invited me to do a guest spot promoting my new book ‘Tales of Blood
and Sulphur: Apocalypse Minor’. With a title like that, it could only be
horror. With a birthday and a backstory like mine, horror was the only genre I
could ever write in. Please get comfortable and settle in. I’ll tell you a
little bit about my journey through the darkest of Arts or more accurately, the
point where my love affair with the Dark Side began.
I
was born on Halloween. No, really, I was. It’s on my birth certificate. 31st
October, 1973. That’s a good starting point for any horror writer. There is a
tale that my mother got freaked out by the combination of a Halloween night
birth and also a full moon, but that’s a tale for another time.
Flash
forward a few years later. We’re still in the Seventies Britain. Punk was
fading out, slowly being replaced by the energetic sound of Ska and the strange
hairstyles of the New Romantics. The soccer stadiums of the UK were more akin
to battlegrounds and racist skinheads still patrolled the streets looking for
people of colour to beat up, main and possibly kill. As one author put it ‘It
was no boogie Wonderland’.
Against
this grim and quite miserable backdrop, a smaller version of myself first
learned the delicious thrill of being afraid. The source may surprise you even
more. Being a geek led me to horror. Back in those days, I was a full-on nerd,
an impressive feat considering that nerds did not have the same cache that they
have these days. Confessing to a liking for ‘Doctor Who’, ‘Battlestar
Galactica’ and ‘Blakes 7’ was a sure path to ridicule. I stuck it out and I’m
still a geek to this day.
But
does this have to do with Horror, I hear ask?
Well,
it was Seventies British Sci-Fi that first scared me senseless. Nothing was off
limits in those days (except sex and graphic gore, obviously). There was no
watershed, no time where programmes deemed unsuitable had to be shown. From the
grim Gothic Era of Tom Baker’s Doctor to the brutal Fascist Federation of Blakes
7, there were a lot of trauma inducing moments to choose from. The decaying
Master and Mr Sin from ‘Doctor Who’ are but two examples but the one that stick
in my mind to this day is the Space Dragon. On a bright Saturday morning, I
experienced sheer terror. I’ve never looked back since.
The
series in question was ‘Space: 1999’, a cult show starring the husband and wife
combo of Martin Landau and Barbara Bain. The show itself was a classic of its
time and a simple enough premise –Moon gets ripped away from Earth orbit and
wanders through the stars encountering new civilisations and threats – kind of
like ‘Star Trek’ but with our beloved satellite fulfilling the ‘Enterprise’
role. In the episode in question, the crew encounter what can only be described
a furnace mouth with tentacle, one eye and the most horrifying scream
imaginable. As if that was pant wetting enough, Ol’ Furnace Mouth Space Dragon
Creature fed by sucking people into its bright red hot maw only to vomit out
their smoking remains afterwards. That episode scared me so much that I never
watched ‘Space: 1999’ again until a few years ago. The seeds were sown however.
Once the initial trauma had died down and I realised that Space Dragons don’t
live under the bed, (they live in space, funnily enough), I began to turn to scarier
things.
Within
a few years of that fright, I was reading Stephen King and the late great James
Herbert and watching the film that made me think ‘I can write stuff like this’.
The film in question?
John Carpenter’s alien masterpiece The Thing. My course was set.
The
reason I’m telling you all about this is because I’m convinced that the Space
Dragon taught me to love scary things, to embrace the roller coaster ride of
emotion that horror invokes. Without the ordeal of watching Michael Sheard
being transformed into a smoking ruin, I may not have bothered with horror at
all. (By the way, Michael Sheard was an accomplished British actor who had the
distinction of being killed by Darth Vader. He was the unfortunate and incompetent
Admiral Ozzel in The Empire Strikes Back).
So
now, with one book in the bag and plenty more to come, I have to thank my geeky
instincts for setting me on the path of horror. I also have to thank the Space
Dragon but that won’t happen anytime soon.
By
the way, the episode in question is called ‘Dragon’s Domain’ and it’s on
YouTube. If you watch it, please
tell
me whether it’s aged well. I’m still too traumatised to go anywhere near it.
***
Tales
of Blood and Sulphur:
Apocalypse
Minor
Tales
of Blood and Sulphur
Volume
One
J.G.
Clay
Genre: Horror
Publisher: Forsaken
Date of Publication: 24th July,
2015
ISBN: 978-1513701998
ASIN: 978-1513701998
Number of pages: 212
Word Count: 77,000 words approx.
Cover Artist: Ashley Ruggirello
Book Description:
Eleven Tales steeped in Blood and
reeking of Sulphur
J.G Clay takes you on a journey
through the voids of Reality and into dark places where demons, mutants and
inter-dimensional creatures taunt, taint and corrupt Humanity. Survival is not
guaranteed, sanity is not assured and death lurks in every corner. These are
the Tales of Blood and Sulphur: Apocalypse Minor; eleven twisted tales of
terror and mayhem..... There are cracks in the skin of Reality.
Some are microscopic, others are as
wide as a four-lane motorway. As the fault lines increase and widen, the door
to our world shines like a beacon in the darkness, a warm and inviting sight to
others beyond our understanding. When They cross over into our realm, The Tales
begin...... A gambler taking one last desperate throw of the dice. A struggling
writer making an unholy alliance. An eternal being fighting to stay alive in
the financial capital of India. A man burdened with a terrible town secret. The
Law Enforcers who must never cry. The End of Days live and direct from the
rural heartland of England.
The blood is warm, the sulphur is
burning, the tales will be told, the Apocalypse Minor is imminent!
***
About
the Author:
J.G Clay was born in Leamington
Spa, Warwickshire on Halloween night, 1973. By sheer coincidence, it was the
night of the full moon. The man was tailor made for the Horror Genre. A
life-long horror and science fiction fan, he has written for his own amusement
since his teenage years, taking time off to do the usual things that adolescent
boys do and growing up disgracefully. Now in his forties, he has returned to
his passion for the dark, the weird and the twisted. Tales of Blood and Sulphur
is his first foray into the world of the Author but rest assured, there are
plenty more stories to come. The man has a plan and he is out to scare the
world, the solar system and beyond. Off duty, he has a passion for music, films
and Birmingham City FC. He can also hold down a half decent bassline. J.G lives
with his wife and step-daughter in Rothwell, Northamptonshire – the heart of
the English countryside, an idyllic setting but a strange one to find a
Nightmare Child of Halloween.
