Opus Questions with Daniel Marc Chant

Beyond this door is another dimension. Another reality utterly unfathomable to the human mind. Real terror exists, I’m afraid. Its the same fear that pulls your eyes to the nearly shut closet, the over-consuming cawing of the mind, like some hellbound raven. The persistent thought that something indeed in hiding under your bed. Yes. Beyond this door leads to a world of unrestrained imagination. Of sight and sound. Of shadow and superstition.  At the summit are the limits of knowledge. Below, are the pit are our fears. But on this highway we’ll find discovery and a wanton taste for delicacies untold. On this road we’ll discover the opus cravings writers of macabre crave most. For every wordsmith craves knowledge. So come, cross the threshold. What is there to fear, but fear itself?

Daniel Marc Chant:

When Thomas S. Flowers asked two books I’d recommend I was wracked with indecision and frustration. Each fleeting moment of thought made me focus on a book I’d read and consider it for inclusion, often the latest one that came to mind would replace the one before it, and so on. Like a mad carousel of interchanging novels my head spun round and round, unable to settle or decide on just one – let alone two.

It’s immediately obvious to those that know me I’m a massive fan of Lovecraft. I’ve had so many discussions on Lovecraft’s influence on not only my life but the lives of those more talented and verbose than I.  So while I felt I could include any of his work in a ‘best of’ list his impact on me is no secret. I felt obliged to include other authors. I usually rely on two stock answers to questions – “My favourite author is H. P. Lovecraft and my favourite film is John Carpenter’s The Thing.”

Thanks to this challenge I cannot rely on these answers so will attempt to capture my adoration for the genre I now occupy, the one of the mysterious and the macabre.

These tales had a meaningful impact on me for various reasons and, if you haven’t read them, I’d strongly suggest you do.

After all there’s nothing like a good book. But there’s especially nothing like sharing a good book.

Hell House by Richard Matheson

Hell House is written by Richard Matheson, most of you probably know him by his little known work entitled I Am Legend.

Hell House, Richard Matheson, 1971

While I Am Legend tends to steal the spotlight Hell House is equally as terrifying, personally I think a thousand times more. Small time indie author Stephen King once commented, “Hell House is the scariest haunted house novel ever written. It looms over the rest the way the mountains loom over the foothills.”

First published in 1971 it tells the tale of Dr. Barrett and his wife Edith together with two mediums Florence Tanner and Benjamin Franklin Fischer. It’s a classic set up as millionaire William Reinhardt Deutsch, on his death bed and desperate for some form of immortality, hires the team to investigate the possibility of life after death. The group heads to Maine and stays at the notorious Belasco House, regarded as the most haunted house in the world.

It’s a wonderful premise and one that doesn’t fail to deliver throughout its brief 288 pages. The house was the site of ancient blasphemy and the walls of the titular Hell House now cause those within its walls to deteriorate into madness and insanity.  There are some wonderful subtexts at play here as the house preys on each person’s weakness – each character serving as a vessel for wider societal issues with spirituality, arrogance, insecurity, pent up frustration and more all swiftly eviscerated, challenged or twisted by the malevolent house.

It’s because of this the book played on my mind, and still does. The book spends its first half carefully building tension, creaking doors but never slamming them, and the whole book is peppered with a bleakness and eeriness that I find lacking in a lot of horror. It’s all the more impressive given its age that it can still shock, still surprise and still offend those of a delicate nature.

It’s often described as a product of its time (aren’t all books that?) but I say silence the naysayers and pick a copy of this up. Dim the lights and light a candle and read undisturbed. I guarantee it will get inside your head. And it will stay there.

The Witches by Roald Dahl

Roald Dahl is well known in literary circles and beyond. He’s a titan with a massive legacy. He’s given us Willy Wonka, James and a Giant Peach, The B. F. G. and more. Reading his books is a rite of passage for young readers.

The Witches, Roald Dahl, 1983.

First published in 1983, when I was a mere 5 years old, I can’t exactly recall when or how this book came into my possession. All I know is that I read it in a night. The words and Quentin Blake’s illustrations captured my young imagination like a trap and I didn’t so much read this book as experience it.

Witches have cropped up throughout society and literature for hundreds of years, most famously in Shakespeare’s Macbeth, but in Dahl’s tale witches are trying to rid the world of children by turning them into mice because the smell they give off is odorous to witches. It’s down to a small Norwegian boy and his cunning grandmother try and save the world’s children from these hideous bald vultures.

It doesn’t pull any emotional punches despite the fact it’s a kids book. It’s dark, subversive (some have claimed it’s sexist and/or misogynistic) and has a genuinely sad and depressing ending (something the film adaptation chose to leave out).

Reading Roald Dahl’s books made me feel like he had respect for me as a reader, not as a child, but simply a young reader. I think Neil Gaimain is similarly capable of not pandering and talking down to young readers but instead challenging them and shocking them. I firmly believe that if you give children respect in fiction they will give fiction respect. It’s why Roald Dahl remains one of the best loved children’s authors of all time.

I want to thank Daniel Marc Chant for taking the time and telling us a bit about the two books that have influenced and shaped his tastes for the strange and unusual. Daniel Marc Chant is a delectably brilliant author who has recently released his debut work of horror fiction, Maldicion, available on both paperback or eBook. Daniel is also the mastermind of an upcoming horror anthology that has pooled together some amazingly talented indie writers, The Black Room Manuscripts. You can keep in touch in Daniel Marc Chant on his website or on Twitter.