by Gemma Files
And so we became friends.
We saw each other socially on numerous occasions, found mutual friends, shared our writing, and witnessed the formation of a community of horror writers in a city where one had previously not existed.
In 1999, Gemma published “The Emperor’s Old Bones,” a horror story so taboo-smashing and so chilling, and so beautifully written, that it won the International Horror Guild Award at the World Horror Convention in Denver, Colorado the following year. I have only been able to read “The Emperor’s Old Bones” once. It’s too upsetting, but it’s upsetting in the same way Benjamin Percy’s fiction would be upsetting a quarter of a century later—deriving its power from a brilliant writer’s unflinching depiction of the unthinkable, without ceding an inch of font point to exploitation or sentimentality.
That same year, I asked her for a story for my third edited horror anthology, Queer Fear: Gay Horror Fiction. Gemma wrote “Bear-Shirt” for me, a violent, homoerotic tale which author and critic Greg Wharton, writing in Strange Horizons, described thusly: “an amazing story of transfiguration and metamorphosis. A story of love, longing, and regret, Files’ tale is also about the animal instinct within, about finding the inner beast, and one’s destiny.” The story became an immediate favourite worldwide, and is still one of the stories most often mentioned by readers who still occasionally write to me about that book.
The fact that an author who was not a gay man had so effortlessly accessed a gay male sexual psyche and not just accessed it, but owned it, surprised many readers. In 2015, we’re fifteen years past the social and literary climate of the time into which Queer Fear was born and, given the number of queer writers writing queer speculative fiction today, it’s almost inconceivable to believe how hard it was in those days to find writers willing to commit to queer horror fiction, let alone award-winning ones like Gemma Files. And yet, suddenly, there was “Bear-Shirt.”
The most logical saw to trot out is, “A writer writes, and a great writer can write anything.”
True, if a bit shopworn. In Gemma Files’ case, though, I’m not sure if that quite covers it. Yes, she’s a great writer, no question at all about that. Reading “Bear-Shirt” for the first time, however, I was struck by two things: its authenticity, and a sudden memory of that afternoon under the table when I momentarily felt the presence of multiple Gemmas, all of them gazing shrewdly and thoughtfully at me through those clear, coffee-coloured eyes.
And, God almighty, the writing.
Take a random line from one of the two books—say, from “The Land Beyond the Forest,” one of my all-time favourite vampire stories: “The moon went out like a lamp. And when Carola found she could see again, nothing remained but the blue-black road, the horizon, and a mouthful of salt.”
It’s the sort of sensual, apparently effortless bit of writing that sets readers a-tingle and makes other writers sit up straight and read it twice or more in an attempt to understand the witchcraft employed in the service of writing a line like that.
Except it’s not witchcraft at all—it’s a once-in-a-lifetime literary gift that is bestowed on precious few, proportionately. Gemma has written about witches, she’s written about angels, she’s written about vampires and neo-Nazis and mermaids and any number of other monsters, human and otherwise. She writes fearlessly and she writes with insight and compassion.
Like all serious writers, Gemma Files is a moralist. A moralist is not necessarily a judge, but moralists can look unflinchingly into the darkest corners of the human heart—even their own heart—and call what they see there by its name, stare it down, and then render it on the printed page. She’s written across time, she’s written in different centuries. Like a medium, she has allowed countless voices to speak through her, giving them life.
Gemma Files is every lazy writer’s nightmare, because the quality of her prodigious output is so consistently stellar. She is the embodied nightmare of every misogynist male speculative fiction writer who’s felt compelled to unburden himself of his bigoted conviction that women have no place in “the boy’s club” of hardcore horror fiction, justifying their embarrassing fear of women who write world-class horror better than they could ever dream of writing it. And she’s the answer to every young writer’s dream of where talent, craft, courage, and sweat can take them.
I remember sending Gemma a version of my Introduction to my fourth anthology, Queer Fear 2. In that version, I thought I’d be clever and write the Introduction as a horror story in itself. I was beginning to get the itch to begin writing long form horror myself (an itch that wouldn’t be scratched till three years later) and I thought I’d flex that muscle a little bit with the introductory essay to the anthology.
It was . . . dreadful. Truly execrable. I’d like to say I shudder at the memory, but I don’t—I giggle a bit, really. The piece was an exercise in unarmed hubris. But I sent it to Gemma anyway. She emailed me back almost immediately. As I recall, she said something like, Well, I can see what you’re trying to do, but it’s not really working, is it? She was right, and I shelved it immediately and got back and did my job as the creator of the anthology, just like she has always done hers, as a writer of peerless stories. Just as she has done it in these two reissued collections, Kissing Carrion and The Worm in Every Heart.
One last thing? I’ve had an extraordinary working life. As a journalist, I’ve been privileged to interview some of the plus grands des grands personnages of horror fiction and film. As an anthology editor, I’ve been privileged to publish them. And as a novelist, I’ve been privileged to call them my friends.
And still, I remain in awe of Gemma Files’ ability to spin her particular skein of moonlight, hell, and redemption. It was an honour to write this Afterword, however ridiculous. You can all see that she was the comet that struck the library—indeed, the horror genre—and set it aflame; you don’t need the likes of me to point that out.
If there’s been an upside to this ludicrous, joyous undertaking, it’s that I didn’t write an Introduction, or a Foreword. I’d hate to think that I’d kept anyone from Gemma’s stories—those vast, terrible riches—with my own barely adequate celebration of them, and of her.
MICHAEL ROWE
The Farmhouse, Toronto
2015
About the Author
Born in England and raised in Toronto, Canada, GEMMA FILES has been a film critic, teacher, and screenwriter. She won the 1999 International Horror Guild short fiction award for her story “The Emperor’s Old Bones,” which appears in her collection The Worm in Every Heart. Both it and her earlier collection, Kissing Carrion, feature stories that were adapted into episodes of The Hunger, an anthology TV show produced by Ridley and Tony Scott’s Scot Free Productions. She has also published two chapbooks of poetry. Her first novel, A Book of Tongues: Volume One of the Hexslinger Series (ChiZine Publications, 2010), was a Stoker first novel finalist and won a DarkScribe Magazine Black Quill award for “Best Small Press Chill” in both the Editor’s and Readers’ Choice categories. A Rope of Thorns (2011) and A Tree of Bones (2012) complete the trilogy. An Omnibus Edition including three new Hexverse short stories (“Hexmas,” “Like A Bowl of Fire” and “In Scarlet Town (Today)”) was released in December, 2013. We Will All Go Down Together: Stories of the Five-Family Coven, a story-cycle of linked short fiction, was released in August, 2014. Her latest novel, Experimental Film, will be released in November, 2015. You can find out more about Gemma Files at http://musicatmidnight-gfiles.blogspot.com.
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