AUTHOR INTERVIEW: PAUL A J LEWIS

We wanted to know more about our anthology authors so we asked if we could pick their brains and scoop out the delicious brilliance.

Next up is Paul A J Lewis, bringing us betrayal and a 🤡 when fame comes at a terrible price in, "Bronco Pete's Last Rodeo."

IP: Would you survive one of your stories in real life? Which one and how would you last? 

P: The story I’m working on at the moment, “Close to the Vine,” is about a newbuild estate where many of the denizens become flesh-eating ghouls after consuming free wine left on their doorsteps by a sinister corporation. I think I’d survive that one because, like one of the characters in the story, I’d be extremely wary of complimentary bottles of plonk left on my doorstep. “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” and all that.

IP: What is the most unconventional piece of inspiration you’ve had?

P: A few years ago, I co-wrote and directed a short film, “The Imposter.” The script developed from a specific scene that I wrote, which became the opening of the story, that features a character watching television in a darkened room before realising that a figure is watching him from the shadows. In the short film, the character is being watched by an imitation of himself (a titular “imposter”), and that’s the beginning of an Invasion of the Body Snatchers-style story.

However, that opening scene was inspired by an incident that happened to me at the house where my wife lived when I first met her. I was watching television with her one evening and thought her dog had walked into the room, crossing from the doorway into a corner of the room. I didn’t pay much attention to it until I realised the dog was in another part of the house. I looked over to the corner where I thought the dog had walked to, and was shocked to see an elderly man standing there. I can picture him to this day: he was balding, wearing round-rimmed spectacles, and wore trousers with braces. He was standing in front of a closed door and seemed to be looking at me.

I thought I was losing my mind until my wife said, “I know what you’re looking at.” I said to her, “Go on then, tell me.” She said, “You’re looking at the man in the corner of the room.” “I think I’m losing the plot,” I said, “Can you describe him for me?” She told me that she couldn’t see him at that moment but had seen him before, and described him to a tee – including the clothes he was wearing and the round rimmed spectacles.

As she spoke, I turned away from the man and when I looked back again, he was gone. Still doubting myself, I stupidly decided to walk over to where the man had been standing. As I stood on the spot where I had seen him – bearing in mind that it was a warm evening and the floor was carpeted – I had the strangest sensation, as if I was standing on a block of ice. The floor didn’t just feel cold, it felt slippery – as if I’d stepped barefoot onto an icy paving slab. I jumped off the spot and probably used some colourful language. That event turned me from someone completely skeptical about “ghosts” (for want of a better word) into a believer.

There were other incidents that happened in that house, including phantom footsteps, a room that the dog would refuse to enter (she would simply stand in the doorway and bark at what seemed to be empty space), and objects that would vanish before reappearing in the strangest places. My wife’s uncle lived in the house for a time afterwards, and saw a strange figure a few times – at the top of the stairs, and even once leaning over him whilst he was in bed. (He was completely unaware of the experiences my wife and I had had in the house too.)

So, the weirdest inspiration I’ve had is the time I spent in a house that was legitimately haunted. I find myself coming back to those incidents time and time again in my writing – not solely for specific scenes, but for the feeling that those events inspired or provoked.

There’s a scene towards the end of “Bronco Pete” that was inspired by the fact that all of my life, I’ve experienced fairly regular bouts of sleep paralysis that is usually triggered by stress. 

There’s also the fact that when I was a child, an uncle of my mother’s had, displayed on a desk in his living room, the skull of a young nun who had been trepanned – possibly as part of an exorcism rite. That fascinated me, and I remember holding that skull in my hands. (My uncle had uncovered it during an archaeological dig, and held onto it because he was also an artist – and he used it to help get the proportions right when painting a portrait from memory.) I’d love to turn the story of that skull into a piece of short fiction. Hopefully some day I will have the opportunity.

IP: How do you write? What does your ‘routine’/‘set up’ look like? Do you have a playlist?

P: Whether I’m writing fiction or non-fiction, it all starts with a pen and paper. I have a couple of A5 notebooks for different types of projects. I record all my ideas, notes and research for non-fiction articles in a separate notebook to my ideas, notes and research for fiction. I’m also a bit of a fountain pen nerd, so I have specific pens that I like to use. (I could go on endlessly about the ergonomics of these pens, and how their nibs interact with different types of paper – making writing as effortless as possible – but it’d be absurdly boring.) I also always carry a pocket (A6) notebook and pen everywhere, and I carry a digital voice recorder with me too. That way, if inspiration strikes me whilst walking to work (for example), I can dictate into that and then type/write the notes up when I get home.

With fiction and non-fiction writing, I work the same way, which is to say that I often write in my notebook a sentence or paragraph (or two or three) and outline the structure of the project, then at a certain point - when I am confident about the direction in which the project is heading – I transfer to my laptop and begin to type there. Once I have a structure to work towards and a developed plan or outline, and some key sentences or paragraphs, I can work completely on the computer. But I find generating ideas or structure on a computer almost impossible – I end up staring at a blank document for far too long, or get distracted by newsfeeds or shopping sites.

When I lived alone, I used to have a specific room for writing/studying. These days, however, the house is quite crowded (I have a wife and three teenage children). It’s a modest three bedroom semi-detached house (by the cemetery, no less, so near the “dead centre” of town!) with no spare rooms that can be utilised as a study/writing space, so all of my writing takes place in communal spaces. That said, I have specific places where I work best. When the weather is nice, I like to sit on the picnic bench that we have in our garden (that my late dad made for us) and write there, usually with headphones on and using film soundtracks (without lyrics: I find lyrics distract me) as background noise. Sometimes I can sit out there and lose track of the time, and find myself typing away outside after dusk. If it’s cold or wet outside, I tend to sit at the dining room table, as this is a room where there are minimal distractions. Sometimes I think I’d love to have a study with a desk and ergonomic chair, etc, but then I don’t like to feel as if I’m shutting myself away from my family. 

I don’t have a specific “playlist” of music, but I find music with discernible lyrics a distraction. Sometimes I write to heavy metal, and at other times I write to film soundtracks. Morricone, Howard Shore, Basil Poledouris, Stelvio Cipriani, Bruno Nicolai, are some of my “go to” composers, but at the moment I find myself listening a lot to John Barry’s score for The White Buffalo. I’m fine with music with lyrics in a language I don’t understand, though. 

As for scheduling, I fit writing in whenever I have a substantial chunk of time that I can commit to it. This is usually in the evening but I do prefer to write in the morning, if I have the opportunity to. I don’t often get the chance to write in the morning, however, simply because of work commitments. I also aim to write a thousand words a day. If I can get a thousand words down in a session, I’m happy. If I write more than that, I’m super happy. If I write less, I’m a little disappointed.

IP: What are you currently working on? If you're not working on anything at the moment, what work are you most proud of? (Big yourself up!)

P: I write both fiction and non-fiction. In terms of non-fiction, I write quite frequently about films for magazines and online outlets. I’m particularly interested in horror films (natch), but especially European horror films, and noir/neo-noir in all its forms. I’m also an academic who specialises in film studies and photography, and in that capacity I’ve written articles for journals and chapters for textbooks. In my non-fiction writing, I enjoy switching registers for different audiences.

Presently, I’m working on two projects. One of these is an article about Brian Yuzna’s films The Dentist and The Dentist 2. I’m quite excited about this, because I love Yuzna’s films and for a long time have been considering pitching a book about his work to a publisher or two. (I had a long-form project about Yuzna’s films in place just before Covid-19 “happened,” and the project sadly fell apart during the lockdowns.) I really like the two Dentist films because they sit at a point of intersection between noir (or neo-noir) and horror (specifically “body horror”).

In terms of fiction, I’m towards the end of writing a short story (of about 6000 words) about an outbreak of “zombies” (for want of a better word) on a self-contained newbuild estate. This story is inspired by all the newbuild estates that have been popping up near where I live recently, all of which seem to be designed to be as self-contained as possible. It struck me that many of these seem very labyrinthine, and almost prison-like. At the heart of the story is a sinister corporation, Starlight Homes, which nods towards the work of J G Ballard and David Cronenberg – particularly Ballard’s High Rise and Cronenberg’s Shivers. But when the story kicks into gear, it’s more like a Lucio Fulci zombie film or perhaps Umberto Lenzi’s Nightmare City. I’m writing it in response to a call for submissions from an American publisher; I’m hoping that even though the story is inspired by current events in the British landscape (the housing crisis, the investment in newbuilds, the integration of corporate interests in pursuing this), the story is “universal” enough to speak to an audience that may be unfamiliar with these issues.

In terms of projects that I’m proud of, before the summer I completed a book chapter focusing on Hong Kong zombie films (“Spooky Encounters with Stiff Corpses: Hong Kong’s Cinema of the Undead”) which will hopefully see print within the next year. I was also pleased with a video essay I wrote and recorded for Radiance Films’ Blu-ray release of Pietro Germi’s The Facts of Murder (“What’s Black and Yellow All Over? All Shades of Italian Film Noir,” in Radiance’s World Noir, Vol 1 set), looking at the points of intersection between Italian film noir and the giallo. That was particularly fun to research and write. I hate the sound of my own voice (who doesn’t?) but when I received the finished disc and played the video essay back, I was very happy with it. Another piece that I’m particularly fond of is an article I wrote for the journal Supernatural Studies about Italian horror films of the 1970s that focus on themes of demonic possession (“House of Exorcism: Possession, Exorcism, and the Family in Eurocult Films, 1974–1979”). I’m a sucker for those kinds of films, and writing about them was a dream because the research involved revisiting all kinds of bizarre movies that have barely been released on home video since the VHS era. (Some of them, such as Ciccio Ingrassia’s L’esorciccio, have never been released outside Italy.)

Of the short fiction I’ve written most recently, my favourite is a story called “Dirty Laundry,” set in Bologna in the late-1970s and narrated by a man who discovers a corpse in the laundromat that he owns. It was inspired by Italian poliziesco films, particularly Fernando di Leo’s noir-tinged polizieschi, the work of the great Italian crime writer Giorgio Scerbanenco, and with a touch of Jim Thompson thrown into the mix. I really loved writing that one and spent a lot of time on the research, to get the locations and period setting “right.” I’m hoping it’ll be accepted for publication.

IP: What are your favourite things about the horror/writing community at the moment? 

P: I think the growth of indie and small press publishers, and the interconnectivity enabled by the Internet. When I was a student at university during the 1990s and writing stories, it was difficult to find opportunities to submit them or get them published – particularly if, like me, you were from a working class background and didn’t have the “network” to comprehend how this might be achieved.

I think the digital age has really opened up opportunities for writers to pitch their work to publishers/outlets or find the “right” publisher for it, and that’s very exciting. With a click of a few buttons, you can find a publisher open to submissions or pitches, and can study their submission guidelines. The whole process/experience feels much less isolated/isolating today, and there is also much more support and advice, with little online communities in particular. All of that is deeply positive.

IP: Who would you say is the biggest supporter of your writing? 

P: The biggest supporter of my writing is undoubtedly my dog, Buddy. He looks at me with curiosity whilst I’m writing, probably thinking, “What the heck is my stoopid hooman doing now?” When I’m writing in the garden, I’m also often visited by the friendly neighbourhood squirrel, who sits on the fence and watches me (usually waiting for me to fill the birdfeeders with seed, to be fair), and my friend Fat Pigeon. (I’ve nicknamed him this because he really is a fat pigeon. People express doubt when I say he’s very recognisable, but that’s the truth.) Fat Pigeon tends to hop about on the lawn near the picnic bench, again probably waiting for the birdfeeder to be filled. I’m fully aware that I’m anthropomorphising both of them, but when I’m trying to work my way around a writing problem, I often verbalise my ideas by talking to either Buddy or Fat Pigeon – whichever is sitting with me at the time. I don’t expect them to answer though. That would be crazy… wouldn’t it?

More seriously, I find it really weird when I meet people who have read something that I’ve written. I guess that’s the old imposter syndrome kicking in. If I have doubts about a piece of writing, I’ll ask my wife to read through it because her criticism can be brutal but is always honest and useful. I have a couple of friends who are also writers, some of whom I’ve collaborated with on projects, and we sometimes share work with one another for feedback/comment.

IP: Why do you write?

P: I’ve thought long and hard about the answer to this question, and I can only say that I write because it’s essential to me. I’ve always written, from as far back as I can remember. I used to write stories as a child and sometimes comedy skits that friends and I would act out for other peers. When I was a student at university, I entered and won a few short story competitions. That inspired me even further. Later on, I found opportunities to write non-fiction, and I love that just as much. It’s nice to find paid opportunities to write that kind of work, but I would do it anyway. I think both non-fiction and fiction writing share similar qualities – the focus on accumulation of detail, structure, and developing narrative; finding a little bit of poetry in language that fits the theme or subject; injecting the right amount of humour – not enough to distract from the subject but enough to keep it interesting.

IP: Name a writer that inspires you and why?

P: I’ve been reading challenging fiction since I was young. I was a “latchkey kid” during the 1980s, and my mum told me that when I returned home from school, I could read whatever books she had on her bookshelves whilst waiting for her to get back from work. One day, she came home to find me reading Last Exit to Brooklyn, which she had forgotten was on the shelves. I would have been maybe ten years old at the time. The joys of having hippy parents, eh? :D

As a child/teenager I used to enjoy reading the Pan Books of Horror Stories, which introduced me to the work of all sorts of writers, from Algernon Blackwood and William Hope Hodgson to Patricia Highsmith and Ray Bradbury. These days, I find Robert Aickman’s work particularly inspirational, and there are portions of some of his stories that have buried themselves deep into my subconscious mind. For example, I find it impossible to visit the countryside without thinking of the church in “Hand in Glove,” and the mystery of what was inside it. I read a lot of Richard Matheson as a child, and his work still resonates with me: I love Stir of Echoes and Hell House, in particular. I discovered Ray Russell’s work about ten years ago, and devoured all of the books of his that I could find. I really admire The Case Against Satan. Sadly, a lot of his work has been out of print for a long time. Thomas Tryon’s The Other and Harvest Home are also books that I find inspirational.

Crime writers such as Patricia Highsmith, Georges Simenon, and Jim Thompson are particularly inspirational for me, in terms of their exploration of dark places within the human psyche – seemingly ordinary citizens who are capable of committing horrendous and inhuman acts. One of my favourite books is J A Baker’s (ostensibly) non-fiction book The Peregrine, which has some incredibly evocative depictions of the Essex countryside offset by the narrator’s descriptions of how mercilessly efficient the peregrine falcon is as a “killing machine.” With hindsight, I think that says a lot about my literary tastes – stories about quiet, serene or even idyllic places that have a darkness at the centre of them.

IP: What would be the worst superpower to have? 

P: Immortality. I mean, who wants to live forever? (Hopefully that’s made people think of the excellent Queen track and also made them want to rewatch Highlander, which is an awesome film.)

IP: And because we have to ask - favourite horror movie?

P: This is a tough one. I’ve been a fan of horror films since I was a small child. A lot of those childhood favourites remain my favourites of the genre today. Pete Walker’s Frightmare would be near the top of my list because, growing up in an English seaside town in the 1980s, the whole milieu of that film (and many of Walker’s other horror films from that period) felt very “real” and immediate to me. I’m a huge fan of Italian horror films, particularly Lucio Fulci’s zombie movies. My favourite Fulci picture is probably The Beyond but I also really like Cat in the Brain. Joge Grau’s Living Dead at the Manchester Morgue made a big impact on me during my childhood, and that would be near the top of my list. John Carpenter’s The Thing is a film I return to again and again, alongside Romero’s Dawn of the Dead. Then again, I adore Brian Yuzna’s work, particularly Society, and Stuart Gordon’s Re-Animator. Terence Fisher is another favourite filmmaker of mine, and the Fisher film I admire the most is probably Frankenstein and the Monster from Hell, which is inarguably one of the most divisive films in his filmography. There are a lot of classic horror films that I adore (Jacques Tourneur, Universal horror, etc) but I think I’m definitely a child of the “video nasty” age, and this has directed my taste to a great extent.

IP: Where can we find you, and your work?

P: I can be found via my personal website (www.paul-a-j-lewis.com), and on social media via X (Twitter) at https://x.com/Krycek_Facility and BlueSky at https://bsky.app/profile/krycekfacility.bsky.social.

I am also the co-host of a podcast that looks at cult and forgotten films from the 1980s and 1990s. The Kill It With Fire – Cult Movies and Cult-Ure podcast can be found on

Podbean (https://killitwithfire.podbean.com/),

Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/show/4ncl2DoXGd0sAPFFdlnCqm), Apple Podcasts (https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/kill-it-with-fire-cult-movies-and-cult-ure/id1545840490),

Amazon (https://music.amazon.co.uk/podcasts/ea23ce3e-d620-4ab1-a30e-7874f31ca1ae/kill-it-with-fire---cult-movies-and-cult-ure),

and on Youtube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbcIZ74ADolB10y-tc1X5Fw).

The podcast also has an account on X (Twitter) at https://x.com/Kill_It_Podcast.