Game Talk - Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane

I'd first met both Marie O'Regan and Paul Kane years ago when they were heading up a newly-launched UK chapter of the HWA (Horror Writers Association). Having been a long-standing presence in the genre - whether it's as authors, editors, convention panellists, or helping to usher in the next generation of genre talent, these two endure. And continue to demonstrate game.

1. For those who don't know, who are you?

I’m Marie O’Regan, author and editor. As author, I’ve published four collections, Mirror Mere, In Times of Want and Other Stories, The Last Ghost and Other Stories and Bleed For Me, as well as the novellas Bury Them Deep and Resurrection Blues and the bestselling novel, Celeste. I’ve had short stories published in many anthologies in the UK, US, Canada, Italy and Germany, including The Alsiso Project, When Darkness Comes, Terror Tales 2, Terror Tales of London, Best British Horror 2014 and Great British Horror #2: Dark, Satanic Mills, The Mammoth Book of Halloween Stories and This Way Lies Madness, among others. As editor, I’ve edited or co-edited around twenty anthologies now, including Phantoms, The Mammoth Book of Ghost Stories by Women, Cursed, Twice Cursed, Exit Wounds, Death Comes at Christmas, In These Hallowed Halls, These Dreaming Spires, Beyond & Within: Folk Horror, The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic, and the forthcoming Best Served Cold and The Hopeless Romantic’s Guide to Enchantment. I also write screenplays, and have placed highly in a number of competitions over the years. I was Chair of the British Fantasy Society for four years, and co-Chair of the Horror Writers Association UK chapter for seven, plus organised several FantasyCons, and ChillerCon UK in 2022. You can find out more at my site, marieoregan.net.

And I’m Paul Kane, award-winning, #1 bestselling author and editor of over 160 releases, such as the Arrowhead trilogy, a post-apocalyptic version of Robin Hood, Bleeding Hearts, the Cursed duology and The Gemini Factor. I also write thrillers as PL Kane for HQ/HarperCollins. My work has been adapted for the big and small screen, turned into comics and I’ve had audios out – including a full-cast adaptation of Clive Barker’s The Hellbound Heart. My books have also been translated into many languages, including French, German, Spanish, Ukrainian, Turkish, Czech, Bulgarian and Polish. You can find out more at my site, www.shadow-writer.co.uk.

2. Game talk – how do you organise and manage your game? How has it evolved?

Marie: When I first started writing, my kids were small, so I tended to write once they’d gone to bed, or maybe tapped away in the background while they were watching a movie in the evening. Since they grew up, I’ve pretty much kept office hours, although we do work late. These days, I fit writing time around other projects – whether that’s editing anthologies, or freelance editing/proofreading – but love it when there’s a lull and I can just write. In terms of what I write, I started out just writing horror short stories, then longer pieces, such as the novellas mentioned above, and then novels. Over time, my writing has evolved to include everything from ghost stories to psychological horror to crime – a genre that has a huge crossover with horror anyway, it’s just a different aspect, really.

Paul: In terms of a working day, I started out in journalism, so I try to keep office hours – which is not always possible if you’re on a deadline. The non-fiction also taught me how to edit, cut down and write quite tightly, something I’ve carried over into my fiction. I’ve kind of moved from one area to another in my career, sometimes switching between a few at a time, which keeps things interesting. At any given moment, I have a fair few projects on the go, and they might be short stories, scripts, anthologies, collections, novels. I try to balance out what I enjoy doing with what pays the bills; sometimes you take a hit on a project, but do it anyway because it’s what you’re interested in or have a passion for. I didn’t really set out to be one thing or the other in my career, so at different times the horror has taken over, or the SF writing, or the crime – but as I say, it might be many things at once. That’s where it helps to have different names for different strands of what you’re doing, I have fans who love the PL Kane novels, but might not care for the PB Kane YA stuff, and vice versa. At the moment, the editing and anthology work is taking up quite a bit of time, for example, but I’m still keeping my hand in with the writing too.

3. Talk us through one of your biggest achievements in your game – give us the story behind it. How did it play out?

Marie: In terms of writing, that would be my supernatural novel, Celeste. As I mentioned earlier, I started out with short stories and then novellas – Celeste was my first novel, and I have a great fondness for it. When I first wrote it, I sent it out to various publishers with no success, then took another look at it – and asked Paul to read it, too. With the benefit of some distance from when I’d first written it – and any feedback I’d received from publishers and Paul – I wrote another draft that I can now see worked better, and this time it sold. Firstly to Silver Shamrock, who sadly closed not long after that – and then to Mark Miller at Encyclopocalypse, who kindly took it on when Silver Shamrock closed. I love that book, and have had some very good reviews/feedback on it, as well as people asking when there’ll be a sequel – which has actually given me an idea for one, when I get time to write it.

In terms of editing, it would have to be co-editing my first anthology with Paul, a BFS publication called The British Fantasy Society: A Celebration. We’ve edited many bigger anthologies now – either separately or together – but that was where I learned the process of how to put one together – from asking authors to take part, to editing and then publishing the finished anthology – and discovered how much I loved doing that. It also led to our next anthology project, Hellbound Hearts, an selection of short stories in the universe of Clive Barker’s novella, The Hellbound Heart. That was a lot of fun to work on, and a real dream project as our first project together after the BFS.

Paul: There are a couple actually, that stand out the most – hope you don’t mind that. The first was writing The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy, which got me the reputation of being ‘The Hellraiser Guy’ as Nancy Holder once called me. That put me in touch with so many people who worked on my favourite franchise – not least Clive, though that was also through the BFS – and so many other projects stemmed from it, like the Hellbound Hearts anthology and Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell. It also led to pitching for the remake of Hellraiser with another author back in the 2010s.

The other is the feature film Sacrifice, which came about because I was getting some of my short films made. I approached the guys at Loose Canon about making one of my short scripts, but they were moving more into bigger projects. Later on, they asked if I had any Folk Horror stories they could look at, with the aim of adapting into a feature and ‘Men of the Cloth’ caught their eye. The rest is history really. I never thought that one of my favourite horror actors, Barbara Crampton from Re-Animator and From Beyond, would ever be starring in something based on my work. But there you go, you never know what’s round the corner in this crazy industry!   

4. Paul, you mention writing The Hellraiser Films and Their Legacy. Do either of you have any dream properties that you would love to work on in any capacity - and, if so, what are you at liberty to tell us about how close you are to doing that?

Marie: I’m a huge Clive Barker fan, so the chance to work on our anthology Hellbound Hearts was a dream, and I thoroughly enjoyed that process; It would be fantastic to be able to adapt one of the stories from Books of Blood – ‘Sex, Death and Starshine’ is the first one that comes to mind, but there are several I’d love to do. Over the years I’ve had the chance to pitch for things like Final Destination and Ghost Whisperer books, which would have been great fun, had they come to pass. In terms of dream projects I’d like to work on – probably my all-time favourite TV show is Buffy the Vampire Slayer, so getting a chance to write for the new show would be a dream come true, with Angel not far behind if that was ever rebooted.

Another show I’d love to work on would be The Mayfair Witches, as I adored Anne Rice’s trilogy of books in that universe. Other than those, I grew up a huge Marvel fan, so would love to work on some of my favourites, in any capacity – Spider-Man, The X-Men, Fantastic Four in particular. Apart from those, I’d love to write somehow for the Scarlet Witch, or Moon Knight… there’s a huge list. I’m also a massive fan of Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, and a sucker for the old Universal monster movies – some of the recent re-imaginings of those have been great (Leigh Whannell’s Invisible Man, for example), and the chance to work on something that iconic would be wonderful.

In terms of anthologies, we’re currently working on something of a dream project, but we can’t say anything yet – I believe it’s being announced pretty soon, though, and we’ve had great fun working on that. There are some projects on the anthology front that we’d still love to do, but again, can’t really talk about those.

We’ve been very lucky, over the years, and remain very grateful for the privilege of being able to work in the arenas that we do. We’re both always looking forward to finding out what comes next.

Paul: I’m lucky in that Hellraiser is really my dream property to work on, and I’ve managed to contribute some books to that – not to mention adapting The Hellbound Heart into a full-cast audio drama, which some reviews said was even more faithful than the movie. Sherlock Holmes and the Servants of Hell actually crossed over Hellraiser with another favourite of mine – I’m a lifelong Holmes fanatic – so I got to play in two beloved sandboxes at once there; the downside being you risk upsetting two lots of fans if you get it wrong. I also came close to adapting a couple of Books of Blood stories, one for film and the other as a motion comic for Madefire – ‘In the Hills, the Cities’ which I scripted and would have been awesome. I used to play Warhammer 40k as a kid, so again being able to write in that universe was another dream come true.

Robin of Sherwood was one of my favourite shows growing up, so it was wonderful to pen The Red Lord and have a part in The Sorcerer’s Incantation, especially after its creator Kip said such nice things about my own Hooded Man books. I’ve been asked to pitch on projects for DC and Marvel, comics characters I was reading from my youth, but there again I’ve also created my own dark superhero in the shape of ‘Mortis-Man’ which I can do what I like with. And there are obviously franchises that would be an absolute dream to work in, like the obvious ones – Doctor Who, Star Wars, Alien, Star Trek, Judge Dredd, Dune, Resident Evil… I’d dearly love to have a crack at any of those sometime, plus a dozen others, if the opportunity ever arises; just putting that out there in the universe.

In terms of anthologies, Marie and I have been working on one in a franchise we both adore for some years now. It’s more popular than ever, given the massive success of a couple of recent films, and it won’t be long before we can reveal all, so keep ’em peeled – that’s a bit of a pinch-me thing too. It’s a privileged position to be in, and we never take any of it for granted.

5. It's great if things go according to plan. Tell us about when it didn't; how did you handle it? What were/are those challenges?

Marie: Things very rarely go entirely according to plan, honestly – every project has its twists and turns on its route to completion. In terms of projects that were derailed, there are several – mostly in the film and TV arena, I have to say. There was a production company interested in one of my screenplays for quite some time, until it fell through. That same project has almost worked a few times, but never quite got there – at least so far. I was in the frame for a feature project and also to take part in an anthology project that again, fell through – that time because of Covid. And there was interest in a novel I’ve written that went so far but again, didn’t reach the finish line. You just have to acknowledge the fact that these things happen, and they’re not necessarily a final no on a project; it just means a particular iteration wasn’t meant to work at that point. It doesn’t mean it won’t reach the finish line with someone else, or at another time. So you let yourself feel a bit down for a little while, then you brush yourself off and keep going with the other projects that are at various stages of completion. There is always something new to work on – and that’s part of the fun.

Paul: Things go off the rails all the time, there are so many projects that never made it across the line. But it’s hard to talk about a lot of them because they were conversations behind closed doors. One was a dream project that would have involved one of my all-time favourite characters, but it fell through at the final hurdle. Doesn’t mean it won’t come around again, of course, but then that’s another reason not to talk openly about any of them.

When things go wrong, or you don’t get a yes on something, it’s obviously disappointing and you get a bit down about it for a while – but you have to pick yourself up and just get on with things. There’ll always be another project to fire your enthusiasm, something else to get your teeth into.

6.  Give a pep-talk to someone on game in your field.

Marie: It boils down to keep going, and realise that a rejection doesn’t have to mean the work was the issue, it could have everything to do with it just not gelling with the person you sent it to; every editor, every agent, will have a different opinion. You look at feedback, see if any of it resonates – or has the same point been made by several people? – and then you look at how you can address anything you feel needs to be addressed, rather than just being a difference in taste/opinion, then get back on the horse and send it out again. Keep writing, keep learning, keep stretching yourself. And keep trying.

Paul: When I was teaching Creative Writing back in the day, I always used to use the Three P’s as a touchstone: Patience; Persistence; Perspiration. You won’t get anywhere without those in this profession. So, if I was giving someone a pep-talk it would be to say don’t give up when things go wrong, as already mentioned – you’re allowed to feel sad, but never throw in the towel – and remember those Three P’s. They’re vitally important.

7. Promo for website / links:

Our most recent releases that we worked on together are two anthologies for Titan, The Secret Romantic’s Book of Magic and These Dreaming Spires, the follow-up to our first Dark Academia anthology In These Hallowed Halls. Plus two others for Flame Tree: Beyond & Within – Witchcraft, just released, and Beyond & Within – Best Served Cold, a crime one all about revenge, out in July.

With regards to our own fiction, Marie has a supernatural novella, Resurrection Blues, out with Black Shuck Books, and a collection of short stories, Bleed For Me, out with Demain Publishing.

And Paul has a collection of short stories and scripts, with behind-the-scenes photos and anecdotes from all of his short films: Short, Sharp, Shocks, out in paperback and hardback through Encyclopocalypse, plus a new novella called Aura from Vervain, all about someone who can read people’s aura colours.

Website Links:

Marie: www.marieoregan.net & www.marieoreganeditor.com. I’m also on Facebook, X, Mastodon and BlueSky. Or Google Marie O’Regan, author and editor.

Paul: www.shadow-writer.co.uk & www.plkane.com I’m also on Facebook, X, Mastodon and Bluesky. Or just Google me, Paul Kane author.

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