Dark bleatings, my mysterious tribe! Next up in my mini series of interviewing creators involved with Strange New Moons (the recent werewolf anthology I co-edited), we have Matthew R. Davis. Now, after some concern about my last interviewee, I should state that Matthew is well and willing to be here for my quest….
…..I’m back. Anyway, he gave this interview willingly so everyone relax.
Me: Matthew, welcome! The concept behind Bit Part really cracked me up and is one of few unique spins I’ve seen on werewolf tropes in recent years. Be honest – how pleased were you when you thought of it? Because I’d be pretty smug.
Matthew: I try not to engage Smug Mode too often! I was amused at the time I wrote it, but it seemed like a one-joke riff, and so I put it away. When I came back to it, I was worried that someone else might have beaten me to the punch, but if so, I’m unaware of it.
I was happy to do something different with the old beast, because I hadn’t written for it since I was a kid – one of my early achievements in writing was a piece called “Hairy Horror” that I wrote when I was twelve. (Even then, I found “Full Moon” too hacky as a title, not that I improved upon it!) It featured me as the hero, all my classmates, and some of the worst and most telegraphed plot twists in fiction history – a villainous teacher called Loup Garou is vanquished partway through, and a mysterious bearded bus driver called Poul Goura turns up shortly afterward – but to be fair, there aren’t many twelve-year-olds who can write a 6,300 word werewolf story and swing a two-part in-class live reading for it.
Sorry for the digression, but I just wanted to squeeze that stuff in somewhere!
Me: I can confirm that no one else came up with the same idea that you did – it was one of a kind!
Which, in your opinion, are the most overused werewolf tropes, and which are the good ones that you wanted to use?
Overused? All of them. Frankly, I have little time for werewolves, and I imagine “Bit Part” is my one (adult) stab at writing that kind of thing. (Though I do have one other unique idea for weres, so never say never, right?) Apart from classics like The Bloody Chamber and The Nightwalker, there are some good books and short stories, like “Boobs” by Suzy McKee Charnas, that use the idea for something interesting instead of yet another war against vampires or whatever, but overall, the whole concept is kind of played out for me. It takes something like Strange New Moons to get me interested in werewolves again, because it’s not about clans and thanes and hunky, morally conflicted man-beasts and all that shit.
Me: I mean, I don’t think there’s any need to disparage hunky, morally-conflicted…never mind. This isn’t about my personal preferences. Anyway – as readers of “Bit Part”, we only know what the protagonist knows, as he learns things. How did you go about striking a balance between giving us clues about the wider picture and making sure you didn’t spoil the ending?
Matthew: Sheesh, I don’t know. It’s kind of an instinctive thing by now, and it must have been back when I wrote the first draft, because it only took me a couple of hours. It seemed obvious to me at the time, but I’m glad it doesn’t to the reader.
Me: If I remember correctly, you previously said that this was a story you already had, rather than one you wrote specifically for the submission call (which explicitly stated that we were looking for unique takes on the tired tropes). When you sat down to write this story originally, had the twist come to you, or did you focus on trying to come up with one as you went along?
Matthew: Yes, I’d already written the story years before, though it was in a much rougher shape back then. I don’t know if there’s any twist as such, unless it’s the inversion of the standard that we learn about pretty quickly – and after that, the ending is kind of a foregone conclusion, or at least it seemed so to me. The whole story was a riff on the main idea, of turning werewolves on their heads, so to speak. I almost always know how a story is going to end before I start writing, so I can work in things that lead into it, and this must have been no different.
Me: In the grand scheme of supernatural, partially/previously human creatures, where do werewolves rank for you?
Matthew: I like wolves as a concept and a device (and because I’m an animal lover), but I think there’s much more interesting work going on around other types of shapeshifters. Tanith Lee, for example, wrote a few books where people turn into ravening beasts that defy simple description. I hope I haven’t offended any were-fans out there, nor sounded ungrateful for this publishing opportunity! I just don’t work with classic monsters much, and when I do, it’s only if I can take a different tack that the reader probably won’t be expecting. I often turn my nose up at zombie stories, and yet I’ve published three of those, too!
Me: Maybe that’s why you were able to come up with something so original for our theme! One of your strengths as a writer is your ability to explore multiple perspectives. Your work always reads as empathetic, rather than preachy. Is conveying the thoughts of multiple conflicting characters something that comes naturally to you, or do you have to sit in those character’s thoughts before you can pen them?
Matthew: I guess that’s another one of those things that feels instinctive, and it’s something you only really learn from interacting with a lot of different people and listening to their stories and experiences. It’s something that’s kind of always been there, though – I used to give my early novels to female friends to read back in my youth, and they were convinced by my writing of women even then. I imagine it’s gotten a lot better since I lost my virginity and had actual relationships! But really, it just comes down to empathy and interest. I give a shit about people other than myself and my kind, and I have friends from all types, so I write them. To a degree, anyway – I wouldn’t feel comfortable writing a whole book from the perspective of a trans person or person of colour, for example, because I haven’t lived that life and couldn’t justify exploring them in such depth without that experience. But a short story, sure. (Strangely, I don’t feel that way writing long pieces from the perspective of women, straight or not. Is this sexual appropriation? Answers in the comments!)
One of the side effects of empathy and kindness, however, is understanding that you haven’t always lived up to those standards and struggling to come to terms with your past behaviour. Some of my stories are explicitly about this. I’m not a big fan of redemption arcs in fiction, but frankly, the longer I live, the more I understand why they resonate with us. We all want to be forgiven, if not by ourselves then by the people we have wronged, and perhaps the universe itself. If you apply that line of thinking to my stories, the universe’s response is generally not a kind one.
Me: Actually, one of the reasons I’m such a fan of yours is because of the way you depict and write women, and how people respond to the issues your female characters face in your stories. I think you’re particularly talented in that regard.
Over the course of your own writing career, what’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned about yourself, either in terms of mistakes you’ve ironed out, or something you’ve realised is a strength?
Matthew: I’m glad this is a craft question! I once wrote a whole novel about a guy’s flaws and how they ruined his life, and then I went and did all the same things myself, so clearly I’ve learned fucking nothing about me. But craft, sure. Uh… I guess I’ve realised my strengths, and one of those, as mentioned above, is empathy and sensitivity. Another is my authenticity, but that has always been there in my art anyway, as I’ve always been too stubborn to do what everyone else was doing. And I’ve gotten much better at editing myself, not “killing my darlings” but understanding what I do and don’t need from earlier drafts, which apparently unrelated details are filler and which elevate the tale on a subliminal level.
Oh, and another strength has come from being a lyricist and vocalist, in bands and on my own, with an additional shout-out to my love of rap: my prose has a rhythm and a flow, and it uses subtle repetitions, counterpoints, and internal rhymes which can be quite mellifluous. (This is why I sometimes get shitty at editors cutting single words from my work or even just swapping contractions in or out – every little syllable effects the whole.) Overall, I’ve just gotten better at writing because I do it so much, and I put so much time and thought into it that I can bash out a pretty strong first draft almost on autopilot now.
Me: Is there an area of horror that remains completely untouched for you that you want to dive into?
Matthew: I’m trying to work out a story for an action horror anthology at the moment, and I’ve been kicking around a really cool poetry novel idea for a few years. Maybe one day I’ll go back to my teenage roots and write some second-world dark fantasy, if I can work out a way to do it that doesn’t seem derivative – something less like mainstream fantasy or grimdark and more like Tanith Lee, Laird Barron’s Antiquity stories, Gormenghast, that kind of thing. (I recently read Lucius Shepard’s The Golden and that was a real ride – it’s basically a surreal Gormenghast except the castle is so big some rooms have their own weather, and it’s a murder mystery only all the characters are vampires or human thralls, and the backstory is total cosmic horror.) Otherwise, I’m happy with the direction my work is heading in right now. There are so many settings and characters and ideas yet to explore… I will never run out of ideas, only the time to tackle them.
Me: What has been your greatest personal triumph, book-wise, so far?
Matthew: Well, I just found out that The Dark Matter of Natasha has been scraped by Meta AI, so maybe that, ha ha. More seriously, perhaps my first full book, If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, because it has an array of accompanying images by my partner and it just keeps selling at local stores in a way that the others don’t – it’s out of print now (your move, publishers!) and I’m down to my last handful of paperbacks. Or maybe Midnight in the Chapel of Love, because one’s first published novel is always special and I’m glad to have caught the attention of JournalStone.
Me: I love ‘The Dark Matter of Natasha’ – what a book! Which of your own works do you think is the best representation of your own personality?
Matthew: Any of them, really – with a few notable exceptions, since I don’t share all of my protagonists’ interests or experiences! But a couple of stories basically are me, plopped onto a page to account for my bullshit and deal with my mistakes. In that sense, perhaps my upcoming collection Songs of Shadow, Words of Woe would be most representative, as I wrote the bulk of the stories relatively recently and they are informed by my experiences in that time, as well as past ones and my own weird, dark imagination.
Me: Okay, now we’re getting down to the real hard questions, but I have a responsibility to ask them.
The zombie apocalypse is upon us. The people you pick to team up with are your survival group for life, but you can only pick from this list. You get two, and the others are probably going to somehow work against you. Who are you shackling yourself to?
Towelie (from South Park)
Sebastian Bach
Wendy Torrance
Gizmo (Gremlins)
The kid from The Babadook
Matthew: Oh, man. I guess Towelie and Seb Bach, because at least we could get blazed and sing together. And I reckon we could take the other three in a fight if they worked against us.
Me: I dunno. Wendy’s pretty handy with a bat. Okay, next… You find yourself in the precarious position of representing your nation in a televised choir competition. You don’t want to embarrass yourself or your fellow man, but only have the following options to form your 4 person singing group, including yourself. Choose wisely.
JarJar Binks
C-3P0
Gilbert Gottfried
Janice (Friends)
Rob Schneider
Marge Simpson
Matthew: Well, I can carry a tune, so that’s okay. Otherwise… Christ… maybe I could do something interesting with Marge and Janice and… Gilbert? I don’t like Star Wars and Schneider can piss off, so I guess that’ll have to do. (Can I have Rob’s daughter Elle King instead? She’s got some hella pipes.)
Me: NO! Elle is in MY choir.
You’re in charge of casting for the remake of either Friends, Supernatural, Twilight, or Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Who are you casting in the main roles?
Matthew: Well, it would have to be Buffy, because I love that one and I can’t stand the others. But then you’re immediately running into a problem: the original show was so good, why would you fuck with that? Maybe I’d cheat a little and do a remake of the Buffy movie, in which case I’m not having to replace Sarah Michelle Gellar, Alyson Hannigan, or anyone like that. Casting? I don’t know, why are you bringing all the hard questions to this interview? Why aren’t you out there with a microphone, door-stopping Tories or something? Let’s say that I’d dig up some unknowns and give them their big break. Ha!
Me: I’m disturbed by your aversion to Supernatural.
Finally, tell readers what they can expect if they pick up your books.
Thoughtful, empathetic, poetic prose about good people getting fucked over by horrific and horrible situations somewhat of their own making. Yes, they’re all autobiographies, ha ha! Well, any description is going to be reductive since I’ve quite a broad range, but yeah – it’s mostly horror, and it’s inclusive and compassionate without soapboxing, and it’s dark and disturbing and original and sometimes a bit sexy.
If you’d like to check out Strange New Moons, this fabulous author (who isn’t trapped in my basement shackled to a typewriter, I swear), and/or some of his upcoming works, there are some links and info below for you:
STRANGE NEW MOONS
matthewrdavisfiction.wordpress.com
Upcoming Projects:
- Songs of Shadow, Words of Woe (JournalStone, May 2025 – no cover yet)
- The Cure: Every Album, Every Song (Sonicbond Publishing, May 2025 – https://www.sonicbondpublishing.co.uk/the-cure)
- Ribspreader: The Novelisation and the Screenplay (Paroxysm Press, TBC)
- “Blood of the Moon” in Bloodlust (Black Hare Press, February 2025)
- “Kick in the Eye” in White on White: A Literary Tribute to Bauhaus (Nocturnicorn Press, February 2025)
- “Black Lady of the Sabbath” in Hand of Doom: A Literary Tribute to Black Sabbath (Nocturnicorn Press, TBC)
A little something about ‘Bit Part’ (Strange New Moons), in Matthew’s own words.
One night, almost a decade ago now, I thought of a possible inversion of the standard werewolf story and was amused enough to spend a couple of hours smashing out a quick first draft. It wasn’t the kind of thing I normally did, since I tend to avoid all the old monsters in my work, so I tossed it in the fabled Trunk that all writers have and promptly forgot about it. I figured nothing would ever come of the idea… until I saw the call for Strange Moons. I went back to the story, had a chuckle, and set about bringing it up to speed – the concept was a bit tricky and I hadn’t gotten the rules totally right, but I kept most of the jokes and added a couple of new ones.
I was surprised, if rather pleasantly so, when “Bit Part” won out over some three hundred other submissions to make the grade! It almost feels like I’ve pulled a fast one, fobbing a Trunk story on you guys, but I guess this just goes to show that an author is sometimes not the best judge of their own work. And hey, I put a lot of work into everything I do – sometimes a frankly barmy amount – so anything I deem submittable is going to be an honest effort. “Bit Part”, it turns out, was a diamond in the rough. (Can I compare it to the Koh-i-Noor diamond so I can cram in a reference to Tooth and Claw, the only televised werewolf story by the greatest show in the galaxy, Doctor Who? Can I also cram a reference into that reference about the other Who story that features, like, a goth space werewolf? No, but also yes? Cool.) So, I guess I really did have much to say about “Bit Part”. I can’t say anything else if I want to avoid spoilers, so I’ll leave you here. Farewell, and if you’re crossing the misty moors tonight – or a certain bridge in a certain city, your city – then good luck…
Happy Goat Horror 
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