Clan Destine Press is bringing out a new anthology And Then, and you can read interviews with the authors here over the next few weeks. There is also an Indiegogo campaign, to which y’all can contribute here.
Today Melbourne Crime writer Andrew Nette talks about “Save a Kiss for Satan”.
What inspired your story/novelette?
Satanism and the occult were major pre-occupations in popular culture in the late sixties and early seventies. Some scholars have linked it to regular outbreaks of occult-related mania that have historically occurred during periods of great social dislocation and social change. Whatever the reason, Satanism was a major theme of a lot of films, from popular mainstream features, such as film Rosemary’s Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and The Omen (1976), to more sensationalist exploitation fare, for example Devil’s Rain (1975), Brotherhood of Satan (1971), The Witches (1966) and Race with the Devil (1975).
My story “Save a Last Kiss For Satan” concerns a tough female cop who thinks she’s being haunted by her long dead explorer occultist uncle, and enlists the aid of a drug addled magician and his punk sidekick. It is inspired by watching far too many of these films, as well as pulp novels and comics with occult themes.
What appealed to you about this project?
Fiction wise I consider myself a crime writer. Science fiction, fantasy, spec fiction, I like to read it sometimes, but none of these are my natural home in terms of what I write myself. I could’ve done a crime story for this anthology, but I wanted to do something that stretched me. A story about a cop, a magician and a punk, who – reluctantly – join forces to battle the forces of Satan, did exactly that.
What advantages does a long-short form offer?
From the point of view of me the writer, long form offers me the ability to do something that has some meat in it plot wise, but which is not too long and is able to be written quickly and delivered to the editor. I was able to play around a bit in “Save a Last Kiss For Satan” with some of the common tropes of horror fiction, flesh out the detail of the story, but I still had to work within the discipline of short fiction.
The future of short fiction is …
Getting better and better, although Australia’s short fiction market still has a bit of catching up to do with other countries, particularly the US. I have written stories for anthologies and short story websites in the US, where there is much more of a sense of a short fiction community, in crime fiction, anyway. There are always really exciting anthology projects popping up that feature not only up and coming writers but very established and successful authors. This is not the case in Australia, which is what makes And Then… such an exciting project and why I wanted to be a part of it.
What’s next for you? 
2016 is a busy year for me. In addition to being in two anthologies, including And Then… I have two books coming out. The first is a non-fiction book I’ve co-edited with another Melbourne writer. It’s called Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction & Youth Culture from the 1950s to 1980s and as the title says, it’s a history of pulp fiction has depicted young people, from juvenile delinquents to punks and skinheads. My co-editor and I are hard at work on the second volume, which deals with pulp and popular fiction influenced by the radical movements of the nineteen sixties and seventies. Later in the year my second novel, Gunshine State, will come out. The heist story is much neglected in Australian crime fiction and I’ve always wanted to try my hand at writing one that is hardboiled, intelligent and uniquely Australian. Gunshine State is my attempt to do this.
Andrew Nette is a writer, reviewer, film lover and pulp scholar, based in Melbourne, Australia.
He is the author of two novels, Ghost Money, a crime story set in Cambodia in the mid-nineties, published by Hong Kong based publisher, Crime Wave Press, and Gunshine State, out through 280 Steps in the second half of 2016. He is co-editor of Beat Girls, Love Tribes and Real Cool Cats: Pulp Fiction and Youth Culture, from the 1950s – 1980s, forthcoming from Verse Chorus Press.
He is one of the founders of Crime Factory Publications, a small Melbourne-based press specialising in crime fiction. He co-edits its magazine Crime Factory, and co-edited Hard Labour, an anthology of Australian short crime fiction, and LEE, an anthology of fiction inspired by American cinema icon Lee Marvin. His short fiction has appeared in a number of print and on-line publications, including Beat to a Pulp Hardboiled 3, Shotgun Honey Presents: Both Barrels, Blood and Tacos, The One That Got Away, Phnom Penh Noir and Crime Factory Hard Labour.
His online home is www.pulpcurry.com. You can find him on Twitter at @Pulpcurry.