Welcome to this Track of Words Author Interview – today I’m chatting to Rosemary Jones, author of Mask of Silver, a new Arkham Horror novel that’s coming out from Aconyte Books very soon. If you’ve ever fancied reading a horror story set in the Golden Age of 1920s Hollywood – or if you now realise that you absolutely do want to read such a story – this is the book for you! It’s due out as a global ebook and US paperback on the 5th January 2021, with the UK paperback coming a month later on the 4th February.
Without further ado, let’s get on with the interview.
Track of Words: How would you describe your new novel Mask of Silver?
Rosemary Jones: Cosmic horror stars in the silent movies.
ToW: Without spoiling anything, who are the main characters and what do we need to know about them?
RJ: All the main characters are members of a silent movie crew who has been working together for several films. They specialize in scaring people by creating what we would call horror films. There’s the flamboyant director Sidney Fitzmaurice, his glamorous star Renee Love, and Renee’s sister Jeany, who designs all the costumes and props for Sydney’s ‘nightmare movies’. The trouble begins when Sydney decides that his latest horror story needs to be set in his hometown, Arkham. When Renee and Jeany’s other friends have strange accidents and start disappearing, Jeany will need to confront her own nightmares to rescue them.
ToW: For anyone not familiar with the world of Arkham Horror, how would you describe the setting and your particular take on it?
RJ: It’s a game and a shared world which draws on the flamboyant aspects of early 20th century history in America and then mixes it up with the best uncanny elements of the pulp fiction of the time. Monsters, unexplained phenomenon, and more, all taking place in a small corner of New England, particularly a town called Arkham.
ToW: What appeals to you about Arkham Horror and the Lovecraft mythos as a setting for writing novels?
RJ: It’s the 1920s! Specifically 1923 in Mask of Silver. The Roaring Twenties were a time of tremendous change, fabulous fashion, and Hollywood’s first golden age. Also I love how Lovecraft often defaults to a pseudo-scientific or even reasonably scientific explanation for the horror. It’s not just “there’s creepy things,” it’s “there’s creepy things that might have been caused by a comet opening a door to another dimension.”
ToW: Where did this specific story come from? Of all the Arkham Horror stories you might have written, what made you choose this particular one?
RJ: I’d been noodling with the idea of the supernatural meets the silent movies for some time. The Arkham Horror setting just clicked. Now there was a reason why untold horrors might descend on a hapless film crew.
ToW: Is this an era of history that you’re particularly interested in? Were there any real-life films, characters or events that you particularly wanted to reference or evoke?
RJ: I’ve been a huge fan of the silents for many years. We still have a former silent movie palace in Seattle, the Paramount, that was built at the end of the 1920s. Going to one of their Silent Movie Mondays (when it’s not a plague year), you can see the mighty Wurlitzer organ in operation. Watching these movies in a packed movie house, with live musical accompaniment, is an extraordinary experience and gives you an idea of how very good many of these films could be.
Horror movies, as we think of them, started very early in the silents and prove to be one of the more watchable genres even today. I’m tipping the cap to Lon Chaney, whose performances were extraordinary and his make-up designs even more so. While we don’t meet Chaney in the novel, Sydney is reading newspaper stories about Chaney’s Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) at the start of the novel. There’s no doubt in my head that Sydney is also influenced by the German Expressionist films like Nosferatau (1922) and Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (1920).
ToW: Outside of silent movies and 1920s Hollywood, were there any other influences or inspirations that you drew upon in the process of planning and writing this book?
RJ: There’s a number of early 20th century authors who occupy my bookshelves, including Mary Roberts Rinehart. Her story, The Bat (also known as The Circular Staircase), is supposed to have inspired the creation of Batman. This 1908 novel ended up being adapted for Broadway (1920) and several silent movie adaptations starting in 1915. It’s a classic comedy-mystery, equal parts funny and scary. Rinehart’s best stories were told in first person and she’s credited with creating the ‘had I but known’ mystery genre.
What’s not remembered as clearly is how smart the women are who utter this line in her stories – a Rinehart heroine generally solves her own problems but is helped along the way by her friends. I wanted the ladies of my film crew to have that type of spunk and connection with each other. The novel is told completely from Jeany’s perspective. While Jeany might not have gone to Arkham if she had but known what she would encounter there, she never shirks from trying to solve the mystery after she arrives.
ToW: What do you hope readers will get out of this by the time they’ve finished it?
RJ: An overwhelming urge to search their attics for missing silent movies. It’s been estimated that we’ve lost more than 90% of American films made before 1929. And that’s just the American films. This was an art form practiced all around the world and one that sadly failed to survive for a variety of reasons including the fragility of the medium. What’s amazing is the work done by various institutions and foundations to rescue what’s left. And the almost miraculous survival of certain footage – things do show up all the time and there’s been astounding efforts to resurrect previously ‘lost’ films. Just be careful if you find a can of film marked Mask of Silver in an old trunk!
But what I always hope readers get out of my books is an enjoyable adventure. I love playing these games. I try to infuse that fun into what I write.
ToW: Do you have more stories planned for these characters – or Arkham Horror in general – in future?
RJ: Like all writers, I no sooner finished this novel than I started to think about “what comes next” with these characters. Also the Aconyte folks are so nice to work with (seriously, seriously nice). I’d love to unleash a little more cosmic mayhem and horror with them.
ToW: Can you tell us anything about what you’re working on with Aconyte for future release, or anything else you’ve got in the pipeline?
RJ: I’m finishing some short stories for anthologies by other publishers. Those are due in early 2021 with publication somewhat later in 2021 or 2022 (again, it’s been a plague year and everyone’s schedules are in flux). However I just released a collection of previously published fantasy shorts as an ebook, Jaunts Afar and Beyond. Which, as I promise in the introduction, will give you four happy endings, one ambiguous ending, and one (according to my editor) very grim ending. I hadn’t looked at some of these stories for a decade or more, so it was interesting to proof the publisher’s manuscript and think about how some of those characters might be getting into mischief today.
If you’re interested in what I’ve done in the past or what’s coming out next, check my website at http://www.rosemaryjones.com. If you wonder where do writers get their ideas, you can find my spectacularly fluffy tweets at twitter.com/rosemaryjones. I tend to chatter about books, writing, the arts in Seattle, games with friends, and some fairly random historical facts.
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Thanks so much to Rosemary for taking the time to do this interview, and to contribute such great answers! I can’t wait to read Mask of Silver, so keep an eye out for a review sometime soon.
See also: my review of Wrath of N’Kai, a previous Arkham Horror novel from Aconyte, and my interview with author Josh Reynolds about it.
If you’re in the UK and would like to support local independent bookshops, you can pre-order Mask of Silver from my store on Bookshop.org*
Alternatively, pre-order Mask of Silver from Amazon*
*If you buy anything using one of these links, I will receive a small affiliate commission – see here for more details.
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