© Evan Woods 2026

I’m retired.

Workwise I was a producer, sub-editor, artworker, designer, illustrator and blurb writer for several publishers and advertising agencies.

Growing up, science fiction and horror were family favourites so my style is influenced by that technically wonky early to mid-20th century ‘Golden Age’ pulp and I gleefully take similar liberties with scientific accuracy to get on with my own stories. On the icky front fans of evil doings might find something up their street. The gruesome stuff and the verses (can’t grace them with the word poetry) in Contraterrene are the result of a lifetime of soaking up crime stories and horror films from Hammer, Amicus, musty old books, a lack of subtlety, creative lack of sobriety, very few personal filters and a strong sense of devilment. Some stories are ridiculous, some juvenile, but hopefully there’s a smidgen of entertainment to be had. Some readers who are afraid of me profess to enjoy my efforts.

As for getting anything published… I live in hope. Only professional critique can really say if there’s merit or heart in my scribbles so if a publisher ever reads this, let me have it on the chins. If there is a heart it’s probably a cold one. I cringingly hope I’m underestimating my efforts. I don’t think of myself as an ‘author’, more of a jumped up blurb writer, a purveyor of pulp fiction, a hack. In terms of purpose, I suppose my tales are just right for dipping into when you need to alleviate the frustration of waiting for a train; you won’t need to think about them beyond the train’s arrival unless you want to. Depending on the genre my work might seem derivative – in my defence I could argue what isn’t, with my background in publishing and advertising I know the cheerful plagiarist has a place at many not so humble tables.

Short stories are enjoyable to write, pithy and hard-boiled. They are usually the result of the sudden appearance of a ‘story clump’ jarring its way into my brain in the middle of the night. Later I work out the details, thread them through the clump and the thing is written and edited over maybe a week or two. Then again a few months later in the belief I can improve it.

Working on longer stories is a technical task requiring a lot of notes. Building a narrative, the personalities of the characters and the architecture of the world they inhabit is an arduous, detailed engineering project demanding constant reference to notes in an attempt to maintain consistency. And because of the time and thought all this takes, the characters become almost living beings and I feel for them, which might seem a bit silly. ‘Alora’, although flawed, isn’t a particularly lengthy read as stories go but as my longest story so far believe me, during its creation I felt for my characters.

Observations have been made that my weirder, more grisly tales are rarely positive or happy, have disturbing content or, as in the case of my rhyming verse in Contraterrene, are creepy and even appalling. There are warnings in the descriptions so why would someone read malevolent horror and crime stories if they expect happiness? Whether grisly or not, the words stem not only from my imagination and (mildly exaggerated) real life balls-ups, they are influenced by a lifetime of socialising with and working around people from a wide variety of backgrounds with different mentalities and value sets including one or two who may or may not have accidentally crossed swords with some form of authority. If someone feels disturbed reading my stuff then so far as I the writer am concerned, 1/ you were warned and 2/ that’s a bullseye! I’ve reached you. And vicariously so have all those others whose existences contribute to my fictions. Readers will also find dark trends infesting my efforts at humour.

Shakespeare’s Hamlet line ‘the undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns’ is quite a fascinating concept even though I’m a total hard-wired atheist, a nullifidian (good word, that). I have no personal interest in any form of divinus, don’t believe in life after death and I really am happy with that because it doesn’t matter to me. I respect others’ rights to believe as they wish but to me the tangible realities of birth, life and death are all there is. Coming from an old family I’ve seen the end result of life up close and personal several times from a very young age, so there’s no hiding from the influences of those experiences. If life is going to generate dark moments, then put them to use is my motto (one of many). Religious tomes are interesting to me only because they contain plenty of juicy bits that give me ideas to adapt for my stories, or bore people with in the pub.

Here’s another bleak point of view that compounds much of my pulp output: think of life as stuff with a straw in it and death sucking noisily on the business end. With mortgage, rent, family, all kinds of financial and personal committments, that straw is your personal containment field and you are trapped within, no way out and most of the time you can’t even see through the side. At the very least a whole third and quite likely much more of your life, your very best years, are spent trapped in the straw as you get sucked up towards those nasty dark lips in the distance, a slurping tenebrosity that swells as you are drawn upwards closer and closer to it with each passing year. By the time the mortgage is paid off, the children have hopefully bogged off and you’ve fooled yourself into thinking you’ve finally settled into some sort of peace, you realise that the selfishness of your achievements were all for nothing. It was a pointless struggle against the vacuum drawing from above and there’s bugger all left when you reach the gooey sucking end of the straw and the slathering, darkening maw engulfs you and swallows you into oblivion.

Well, cheer up everyone! You get that one-paragraph horror story for free. I reckon I’ve had enough fun at your expense and I’m not going to apologise.

I intend to continue punishing my very few readers with my scribbles until my mind crumbles into a horrible mess, I forget what toilet paper is for and go shopping in Tesco without any clothes on… hmmm, there’s a tiny evil voice inside my noggin urging me to do just that while I’m still compos. As Edina Monsoon would say, shit PR is still PR.

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