1. When did you start writing?

I didn't choose writing, it chose me. The urge to write is more of a need, a similar addiction to the one I used to have for cigarettes and still have for beer. It's always been there, in the background. I wrote short stories at school, and dabbled a couple of times over the years, but it wasn't until I was in my 30s that it really took hold.

Back in the very early '90s I had an idea for a story... I hadn't written much of anything since the mid-70s at school, but this idea wouldn't leave me alone. I had an image in my mind of an old man watching a young woman's ghost. That image grew into a story, that story grew into other stories, and before I knew it, I had an obsession in charge of my life.

So it all started with a little ghost story, "Dancers"; one that ended up winning a prize in a national ghost story competition, getting turned into a short movie, getting read on several radio stations, getting published in Greek, Spanish, Italian and Hebrew, and getting reprinted in The Weekly News newspaper in Scotland.

2. What came first: Self-publishing your books or getting your books published by a press? What was that experience like?

The self-publishing side is relatively new for me, really only in the past 5 years. Before that, I sold over 300 short stories in magazines and anthologies, including appearances in the likes of NATURE FUTURES and GALAXY'S EDGE among many others, and I've had over 30 novels published in the horror and fantasy independent genre presses, with more coming over the next few years. I went full-time in 2007. Haven't starved us yet.

Something you don't get with self-publishing is the chance to rub shoulders in print with your heroes, and I've been fortunate enough to appear in magazines and anthologies alongside many of my favorite writers. It's an experience I'm glad I didn't miss.

3. What kind of books do you write?

I write at the pulpy end of the market - adventure stories for people, like me, who never quite grew out of their youthful reading habits. I think you have to have grown up with pulp to -get- it. A lot of writers have been told that pulp=bad plotting and that you have to have deep psychological insight in your work for it to be valid. They've also been told that pulp=bad writing, and they believe it. Whereas I remember the joy I got from early Moorcock, from Mickey Spillane and further back, A. E. Merritt and H. Rider Haggard. I'd love to have a chance to write a Tarzan, John Carter, Allan Quartermain, Mike Hammer or Conan novel, whereas a lot of writers I know would sniff and turn their noses up at the very thought of it.

I've written horror, fantasy, science fiction, crime, westerns and thrillers. Plus the subgenres, like ghost stories, occult detectives, creature features, sword and sorcery, etc.

And in my case, it's almost all pulp. Big beasties, swordplay, sorcery, ghosts, guns, aliens, werewolves, vampires, eldritch things from beyond and slime. Lots of slime.

But I don't really think of them as being different. It's all adventure fiction for boys who've grown up, but stayed boys. Like me.

4. What can you tell me about your new books coming out this month? (Feel free to include an excerpt from each book, if you’d like.)

I've been self-publishing a potted history of my writing career as the WILLIAM MEIKLE CHAPBOOK COLLECTION, a set of booklets at either 3 short stories or a novella in each, all for 99c on Kindle and also in PB and HC. They do pretty well for me, and the newest one, in July 2025, is SPECTRES.

It's three ghost stories, all set in Scotland, featuring a spectral big beastie, a Roman era remnant that won’t lie down, and a young Arthur Conan Doyle, a student at Edinburgh University investigating a girl brought out of an ancient bog who should be dead, but isn't quite.

5. What sort of methods do you use for book promotion?

I really don't do much except waffle a lot on social media. Over the years I've built up a nice number of readers both there and in my newsletter, and between the two it seems to do okay for me. I've never had the ready cash to do much actual advertising on my own, but luckily, I fell in with some independent publishers who know what they're about, and they do most of the hard work for me.

6. Where do you get your ideas for stories?

The correct answer, of course, is I make stuff up, in my head. But the clarity that brings an idea forward into a plot and a story or novel is the end of a process that’s a bit more convoluted in nature.

For me, it starts with the drift.

And that starts as soon as I’ve finished a piece, or even sometimes during. My mind goes blank, almost empty, and I fill it with random stuff; snatches of music, images from films, bits and pieces from books, song lyrics and poetry and general nonsense from my memories (there’s a lot of that).

Sometimes this drift lasts for weeks, sometimes it’s only a matter of minutes. If I’m receptive, an image comes to me, like a still from a movie, or a photograph, one that is usually either the start, or the end of a story. And once that image starts to move and the soundtrack kicks in, that’s when I know I’ve got something I can work with.

Occasionally though, I get too many of these static images at once. Writing them down in a notebook helps, as I can then go back later, read the notes, and see if it still grabs me. Often, I’ve lost interest by that time though. If they then come back again later, I’ll take a closer look at them, but if nothing says ‘write me’ in big letters, I go back to the drift.

I’m in the drift today.

7. I noticed that you are also a self-publisher. What makes you to decide to self-pub a book or to submit it to a publisher?

The main driver in recent years has been the death of several of my publishers. When I got the rights back to a bunch of books, I had to decide whether to go on the querying merry-go-round or bite the bullet and self-publish. I did manage to re-place several books with independent presses, and the others I have now self-published, and that side of things is still a growing shoot, currently making up about 25% of my annual income, and rising.

For new work, I tend to have a preferred publisher in mind while writing, and am lucky enough to have a couple always eager for more work for me. Not as many as there used to be in the past, but then again, I'm 67 now, and my career is slowly winding down as I pull slightly away from writing in favor of more rest :-)

8. How do you manage the self-publishing end of your books alongside those getting published by an indie press? Do you promote them equally?

See my answer above about promotion. I do tend to push my self-publishing stuff more on social media, but that's only because I know my publishers are doing their bit on the other side of things.

9. What are you working on right now?

I have a long-running pulp series on the go at SEVERED PRESS, the adventures of the S-SQUAD, a bunch of wee sweary Scottish squaddies who are a special forces team tasked with hunting and stopping big beasties. I'm up to #19 in the series, currently writing OPERATION: FENLAND, with the lads hunting down a spectral black hound in the Norfolk Broads during a flood... I'm having a lot of fun.

10. Any advice for other authors?

Don't give up. I've been at this 33 years now, and almost gave up several times. If I'd done it in 2005, say, the last time I got very close to packing it in, I'd have missed 18 years as a full-time writer. How sad would that have been?

ABOUT WILLIAM:

William Meikle is a Scottish writer now living in Canada, with over thirty novels published in the genre press and more than 300 short story credits in thirteen countries. He has books available from a variety of publishers including Weird House Press and Severed Press and his work has appeared in a large number of professional anthologies and magazines. He lives in Newfoundland with whales, bald eagles and icebergs for company. When he's not writing he drinks beer, plays guitar, and dreams of fortune and glory.