JOHNNY: Shaun, what books were on the family bookshelf when you were growing up? And did those books influence you in the way you now write?

SHAUN: Bloody hell, that's asking me to remember a long time ago (well, no, it's not actually, I'm not that fucking old..). To be honest, I don't think we had any bookshelves in the house when I was growing up...None of my family have ever been great readers to be honest...not fiction anyway. My mum read and still reads biographies and my dad read and reads non-fiction so the fiction that accumulated in the house belonged to me. The Pan Books of Horror stories to start with and then, when I got to my teens I graduated to stuff like THE EXORCIST and ROSEMARY'S BABY. I read alot when I was in my teens (horror, thrillers and historical stuff) but, as soon as I started writing for a living I stopped reading fiction...If the stuff I read when I was a kid influenced me when it was only in the subject matter. I reckon one of my biggest influences at that time was actually the TV series THE AVENGERS (stop laughing...)..it was on every Friday night when I was a kid and I loved it. My influences were always more visual than literary...

JOHNNY: When did you discover your flair for writing, and what were the first ever pieces you completed? Were you writing horror at that early age?

SHAUN: The first things I can remember reading when I was very young were American horror magazines like FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND and stuff like that (younger readers have just exclaimed en masse "fuck me I didn't know he was that old...") and I used to watch horror films every Friday night (my mum let me..). I loved horror from such an early age it was inevitable I suppose that most of the short stories I wrote when I was a kid were horror based. I even did a Dracula story for one part of my O level exam (and still passed...). I never wanted to be a writer however until I was about 18 when I read NIGHT OF THE CRABS (Guy N Smith) and thought "fuck me, I'll have a crack at this myself.."...I wrote a lot of crap (two novels about the IRA, a Mafia novel and a couple of film scripts for thrillers) but then I saw the film CROSS OF IRON and thought that I wanted to write a war novel. I was nineteen at the time and I was more heavily influenced by films than books so, in all of the ten or twelve war books I've written I reckon there's at least one line of each one from CROSS OF IRON...(sorry, I call that a homage..).

JOHNNY: At what age was your first professional sale and what was it for?

SHAUN: My first book was accepted when I was 21. I'd had about forty rejections on various stuff by then (including some rejections for short porno stories which were sent back with the complaint from the magazine publishers that there wasn't enough characterisation...because obviously everyone reads porn because of the complex nature of the characters don't they...) My first accepted book was a war novel called BLOOD AND HONOUR -originally titled Scorched Earth) and Robert Hale paid me the princely sum of one hundred and fifty quid...I was made up...I did four more novels for them for the same price and then had a horror novel called THE SKULL accepted by Hamlyn Paperbacks (who did loads of horror back when) who paid me 750 quid...fuck me...mind you, it was a breakthrough for me. There's an old adage in the book business that everyone's first published novel is autobiographical...well..mine was set in the Eastern Front in 1944 from the German point of view so I reckon that blows that theory out of the water...Looking back on it though, the central character was probably a forerunner of the character who was eventually to become Sean Doyle nearly ten years later...(oops, slipped into pretentious mode for a second there, sorry about that...)

JOHNNY: I've always been intrigued by authors choosing to have pen names. You have written many war novels, westerns and even one horror book under different monikers. What did the use of a pen name give you that you felt using your own name wouldn't have?

SHAUN: I think it's because the publishing business was always so intent on putting authors into individual boxes (thriller writer, horror writer, romance writer etc. etc.) and there was always stuff I wanted to do that wasn't like the stuff I was known for by the trade. If I'd done westerns, war novels and Christ knows what else as Shaun Hutson then they'd have all ended up together on the bookshelves in shops in the horror section no matter what they were about. Booksellers seem incapable of stocking authors according to genre, they just do it by name...or, these days, by which fucking celebrity it is...I must admit though that I always used to write in different genres the same way I wrote horror by which I mean, who says you can't have suspense in a Western or tension in a war novel? There are certain ground rules you have to follow dependent on which genre you're working in but no one says they can't cross over or use elements not normally associated with them. War novels, Westerns and stuff like that just died out though I'm sad to say. There's no market for it now either even though it's still popular in libraries...

JOHNNY: Out of the novels you've written – has there ever been a case where you thought you may have overstepped the mark?

SHAUN: I've never been very good at self-censoring to be honest...To a degree I don't think you can go too far in horror as long as it's relevant to what's going on in the novel). That's a bit like having too much romance in a love story or too many thrills in a thriller...in my humble opinion. I can't imagine that Jackie Collins ever looks at one of her books and thinks "Wow, I really had too much sex in that..." With horror books I don't think you can ever have too much horror, simple as that and the dictionary definition of horror is physical revulsion after all...

JOHNNY: Has there ever been an instance where an editor couldn't get it on with one of your books because it was so graphic?

SHAUN: Er...yes...a scene in SPAWN (nicknamed the bloody lingus scene) was cut by my first editor. Another editor insisted a scene I suggested in EREBUS not even be written after I'd discussed it with him...And, all through the years, there have been various scenes and chapters that have been trimmed because of the sensibilities of editors here and there.  WARHOL'S PROPHECY contains one. DEADHEAD was banned by W.H. Smith because of two letters of complaint from members of the public (scenes which editors had already cut I hasten to add...). I suppose it goes with the territory and with me not knowing when to bloody stop...I have no idea at all where the boundary of good taste and bad taste overlap and I never have. I hope I never do know when it comes to violence...No, just kidding, there are some things that you just can't do...violence to children is an obvious one, especially sexual violence and rape is always a tricky thing to write. People also hate it when animals get hurt in my books...(it's alright if you rip the heads off people in print but God help you if you harm a cat...). On the whole, unless I'm really feeling fucking awkward, I'll let editors have their way, some of them actually know what they're talking about...I find lately that there is more objection to bad language than there is to violence. On more than one occasion, an editor has asked me to remove ALL the bad language from my books...I think I told them to fuck off...

JOHNNY: What books have been the easiest and what have been the hardest to write?

SHAUN: Most of the early ones were easy to write because I was flushed with youth and enthusiasm...(ha, ha..). As time goes on, obviously, you have to be careful not to repeat yourself, your plots, your characters and situations. I've always prided myself that in 29 novels under my own name, the plots have always been different and I hope I can continue like that. I hate formula writing. DYING WORDS was easy to write because everything just seemed to slip into place. HYBRID was very hard because I'd intended that as the fourth novel featuring Sean Doyle but the publishers then said they wanted horror not thriller so I had to then wrap a horror story around the thriller I'd already written...Some are harder than others because of the subject matter too. STOLEN ANGELS affected me more after I became a father...My wife was pregnant while I was writing it but, by the time I read the proofs we'd had our daughter and I found the scenes of child abuse a bit strong (but I got over it...). Now, if there's a scene that I need to inject emotion into then I picture my own wife or daughter being hurt (weird I know but it works...)

JOHNNY: I'm always interested to hear how writers' material changes through time. How and why do you feel that yours has?

SHAUN: I think anyone creative will, if they work at something for a certain amount of time, find that their material changes. You can't help it. As you get older and have more experiences then there are other things you want to write about. I couldn't have written a book like NECESSARY EVIL or TWISTED SOULS when I was 18 (and many would say I probably only just manage it now...) but the one thing I've tried to keep is the passion of the writing, the pace, the unpredictability and all the things that my readers like so much. All I've ever tried to do though is write what I want to write and hope to Christ that someone wants to read it. I know you can try and jump on bandwagons (plenty have..) but I think that's pointless. You change because you can't help yourself. Either that or you work under pseudonyms...

JOHNNY: How did The Terminator film tie-in come about? Who approached you – and did you ever find out if James Cameron commented on the novel? When was the last time you read it?

SHAUN: I was being published by W.H. Allen at the time and the managing director picked up (literally) a copy of the third draft script when he was in America showed it to me and said would I do a novelization of it. What I didn't know was that no one had paid for the bloody rights...I finished the book, it sold alot of copies and some were even being shipped to the States when they realized that it was in fact "illegal"...that's why there was another version by Randall Frakes and Bill Wisher. It's the only time this has ever happened with a film having two novelizations. I added a couple of scenes to the manuscript which, obviously don't appear in the final film. I haven't read the novelization since 1984 when I wrote it...

JOHNNY: Slugs – The Movie. What were your first thoughts on seeing the film – and would you be keen to give the rights to any filmmakers if they expressed an interest in adapting one of your novels and what ones would you like to see made as films?

SHAUN: The thing with selling books for filming is that you know what turns up on screen is going to be nothing like your book so you just take the money and run - well, you should anyway..). If the film is shit then you can always say "well, of course it was it was nothing like my book" and if it's brilliant you say "of course it is, it's based on my novel." So, if they pay you enough money for the rights it's a win-win situation as far as I'm concerned. Having said that, I found the whole thing quite amusing when SLUGS was shown for the first time. A print of it was flown into this country from the States to be shown at a horror film festival and I saw it on a big screen for the only time - that was a real fucking treat...) but the audience loved it, pissed themselves. As I said, you can't get too precious about stuff when film makers are fucking it about. Any writer who moans about their book being fucked up by a film company after having been paid a fortune for the rights should just shut the fuck up and think themselves lucky. I didn't even get paid enough to ease the pain....Books being turned into films...all of them! As long as someone offers me an obscene amount of money for the rights to all of them then I couldn't give a fuck if they turn them all into musicals...Of course it'd be nice if one or two were actually filmed properly and filmed well by good directors using a good cast - David Fincher directing BODY COUNT, Martin Scorsese directing WARHOL'S PROPHECY, The Coen Brothers directing anything...) but, knowing my luck, RENEGADES will be filmed with Rob Schneider as Doyle, Bette Midler as Georgina Willis and will be directed by Nora Ephron...I would love to see LUCY'S CHILD filmed and HEATHEN too and TWISTED SOULS but, what the fuck, it's never going to happen is it...

JOHNNY: Do you feel that you have more freedom in horror literature than directors do in horror films? It's rare when, if at all, we hear of a backlash against a book.

SHAUN: I think that it'd be great to get a book banned, at least you'd be sure of having plenty of publicity for it! I mean, Salman Rushdie might have got a death threat over The Satanic Verses but it didn't do the fat cunt's bank balance any harm did it?...I wanted to write a novel a few years back about Jesus and the second coming (with a twist obviously) but my publishers shit themselves when they heard the premise and it never happened because they were frightened of the comeback from the church. They should have scrapped the usual mailing lists and just sent copies to The Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Salvation Army, we'd have had publicity like you can't imagine...I'd have had the anglican equivalent of a fucking fatwa no doubt but what the hell...You can't shy away from certain topics just because they're controversial. I've written about satanic child abuse, bestiality, snuff movies, race problems and Christ knows what but, in the end, they're only books, get a grip...

JOHNNY: You've been very outspoken in the past about your views on the faces that make up the UK horror scene. Do you still despair?

SHAUN: I only despair for the state the book business is in, I couldn't give a fuck about the faces that make up the UK horror scene, in fact, I didn't even know we had one...Years ago, on the odd occasion I used to go to conventions, I found that it was just the same old faces talking about the same old shit. Writers too obsessed with their own work and how important they were and too many people eager to foster that belief. I’'m happy to say I was never part of that bullshit, never have been and never will be. I was always too busy making money and selling books to be interested in what other authors thought of me anyway. When you enter a business like the book business, you have to be able to cope with criticism and sometimes, those who dish it out can't take it. If one of these so called "faces" criticised me then I’d criticise them back and many people can't take that...If you don't want someone having a go back at something you've said, then keep your fucking mouth shut to begin with...Let's be honest, writers are hardly vital to the grand scheme of things are they (and any writer who tries to tell you they are is a pretentious twat..). If you dropped five hundred writers in the sea no one would notice, if you dropped five hundred nurses in the sea then that's a different matter....

JOHNNY: What kind of fans do you attract?

SHAUN: The most brilliantly loyal ones. I've had the same hardcore of fans for twenty years or more and I'm grateful for that. All horror writers attract the same kind of fans, those looking to be thrilled, scared, challenged or revolted. I like to think I can do all of those...

JOHNNY: What advice would you give to aspiring writers trying to make it big?

SHAUN: If you want to make it big then be prepared to kiss the right arses...These days, alot of publishing is about sucking up to the right people, knowing the right people and, if you're going into films, being prepared to have your work ripped to pieces by people who couldn't be creative if you put a gun to their heads...If I'd have been prepared to kiss arse then I'd be a millionaire by now but I hate mixing in those circles, I can't feign interest when some boring cunt is telling me what I have to do (that's why I've got an agent). When I first started it was easy to do the presentations and chat to big knobs at booksellers but now everything is done electronically, books are ordered according to which celebrity has written them, writers are getting paid advances that no publisher is ever going to recoup and it's practically impossible to break into the business (and I'm talking about a new writer getting their books into Smiths and Waterstones etc. not winning some fucking prize at a convention, that's not going to sell books for them) the book business is in the worst state it's been in for thirty years and it's only going to get worse. But, somewhere, someone might crack it. Might come up with the right product at the right place at the right time and that's the most important thing you need when you want to make it big. Not talent, not great literary ability, but luck. Pure and simple.