An accomplished and celebrated author within the genre, Jasper Bark has a slew of accolades to his name on the back of celebrated work in the genre, featuring work in a variety of mediums and styles. Now, with the re-release of his novel "Dead Scalp" on Crystal Lake Publishing, I talk with him about his early interest in writing, the novel itself, and upcoming plans.
Me: Hello and thank you for taking the time to do this. First off, when did you get into horror in general? What films specifically got you into watching horror movies?
Jasper Bark: Thank you so much for having me on your blog, Don. I think I first got into horror around the age of five when I stumbled upon the black and white Marvel UK reprints of the horror comic, Tomb of Dracula. It was Gene Colan’s artwork that did it for me. His use of line and shadow scarred me at a seminal age and set the course for the rest of my life. Black and white horror comics were the hook that got me into the genre, British reprints of Warren Comics and Marvel magazines like Tales of the Zombie.
The films that got me into watching horror were the old Hammer and Amicus films. In the 80s, here in the UK, they would show them late at night, over the weekend on the BBC. I would sneak downstairs, after my parents had gone to bed, and watch them with the sound turned low.
My favorites were always the anthology horror movies. Dead of Night, the black and white movie from 1945, remains an all-time favorite to this day
Me: When did you initially discover a passion for writing? What aspect of the creative arts appeals to you?
JB: I would have been around five years old (once again). I started drawing and writing my own comic books and writing and illustrating my own stories. I was pretty obsessed with it, even at that age. I remember, one Christmas, my parents had to confiscate my pens and paper so I’d stop writing and open my presents with my sister.
Creatively, I’ve always made my living as a writer and a performer. The aspect of creativity that appeals to me most is its ability to bring people together. As a creative practitioner, you can reach out to other people and not only move them, but let them know they are not alone in the things they feel, think, and believe. As audiences, we can all come together in a shared love for the creative pursuits we admire and follow. It doesn’t matter what our faith is, what our social background or our race might be. We can still bond over the love we share for an artist or a genre.
As a writer, what appeals to me most is the opportunity to ‘pay forward’ everything I’ve gained from reading other writers’ work. As a reader, there are so many books that have meant so much to me at different points in my life. That has touched me, broadened my view of the world, and changed the way I think about things. I owe those authors a debt of gratitude that’s impossible to repay. So, as a way to settle the tab, I try to create work that will mean as much to other readers as my favorite authors’ work has meant to me.
Me: Who were some of your favorite writers growing up? Do you try to take influences from their style with your own voice in your work?
JB: My favorite writer as a child was a fantasy author called Diana Wynne Jones, who is most famous for writing the novel Howl’s Moving Castle, which was adapted into the famous Studio Ghibli film. Her work is dark and atmospheric and full of strange magic, and I couldn’t get enough of it from ages 8 to 11.
The first horror writer I fell in love with was Robert Bloch. I encountered him at age 12, when I stumbled on a paperback copy of Psycho in my local library. I had never seen the film, so the ending totally blew me away. I have never been the same since. At that point in the UK, none of Bloch’s books were in print. His short stories had appeared in anthologies in the 60s and 70s, so I used to collect those from thrift stores, second-hand books, and yard sales. I would buy these books, for a few pennies, simply for the one Bloch story. But they also included work by such masters as Poe, Ambrose Bierce, Edith Nesbitt, Algernon Blackwood, H. P. Lovecraft, and Clark Ashton Smith. So that’s how my education in classic horror began.
Because I sought out and read so much of Bloch’s writing, particularly his short stories, it’s fairly obvious he’s had an influence on my writing. In particular, I would say his wordplay and the way he structures stories taught me a lot about writing. I discovered King’s work as an early teen and, from the get-go, I was fascinated with his style. I knew I was going to write when I grew up, and his down-home authorial voice and compulsively readable prose were something I wanted to absorb and understand so I could create something similar. I still think he’s one of the great 20th /21st Century stylists.
Finally, the writers Ramsey Campbell and Lisa Tuttle showed me, around age 13/14 years old, that you could write most effectively when you concentrate on the things that genuinely scare you. What I learned from their writing was how to take your personal neuroses and phobias, the things from your lived experience that make you most uncomfortable, and use them as raw material for your fiction. If you do this, your horror fiction will have a much greater impact on your readers. That’s a lesson that’s stayed with me to this day.
Me: Is there any specific genre you prefer to write? Is there a style or format that you find easier to get into, even if you don't have a preference?
JB: The horror genre is a broad enough genre for me to cover everything I want to comment on and explore in the human condition. My problem in the past was that I was too comfortable in too many genres, and this made it hard to build up a following. I wrote comics for adults and children in every conceivable genre, from humor to action/adventure. When I graduated to writing novels, my first novel was sci-fi, my second was a WWII espionage novel, my third was a post-apocalyptic story, and my fourth, Way of the Barefoot Zombie, was horror.
When I began concentrating on one genre, I started to get an audience. I don’t write standard horror fare, however. My work tends to appeal to those readers who think they’ve seen it all in horror and want to read something they’ve never seen before. So, in many ways, I’m becoming something of a subgenre all to myself.
Me: So that brings us to the re-release of your novel “Dead Scalp.” What was the initial inspiration behind writing it?
JB: The initial inspiration came from a fever dream. Whenever I get a dangerously high temperature, I tend to trip balls. I confess that I rather enjoy it. In this instance, I was running a very high temperature, and I began to hallucinate the opening scene of the novel. It played out before me, like a mini-psychodrama.
I was watching a kangaroo court in a saloon in the Old West. The accused was stitched up and sentenced to a fate worse than death, which in this case meant having his mustache shaved off. He begged the assembled cowboys to hang him, shoot him, anything but shave his mustache. His pleas went unheard, and his mustache was removed. Then he was dragged from the saloon, begging for death. Meanwhile, his mustache was glued to a wanted poster with his face on it and stuck up behind the bar. Outside, human hair was beginning to break through the arid ground, like a light brown lawn, and to climb the sides of the building on the ramshackle street, like vines and creepers…
I had no idea what was going on, but I wanted to know more. So, as soon as I got well enough to prop myself up in front of my laptop, I set myself the task of continuing the story.
Me: Initially included in your Bark Bites Horror series, were there any concessions to the story to make it fit into the line of novels?
JB: No concessions were necessary. I admit, I couldn’t resist doing a tiny bit of judicious editing. I’m something of a perfectionist, and I can never stop tinkering with my work. Other than that, it was republished just as it originally appeared, with all the intensely gruesome bits kept in and beefed up.
The great thing about the Bark Bites Horror line is that all the novels (except for the Draw You In trilogy) are stand-alone works that are linked only by the fact that they explore the outer frontiers of what’s possible in horror fiction!
Me: Was there any special significance to making the characters interact in this gruesome western town?
JB: Initially, I was just going where the story took me, trying to understand what was actually going on in this somewhat violent and unexpected tale. It had started in the Old West, so that’s where I followed it.
However, you often have to write a story to understand its significance. In the same way, you have to work out an equation to get the final answer. In this instance, it became obvious to me that I was exploring the darker sides of the great trek west, but not in such a way that it would overwhelm the story or start preaching to my readers, for whom I have too much respect to resort to polemics.
Me: Was there any part of your real self injected into the characters?
JB: The thing is, most speculative fiction writers eventually discover that everything they write is autobiographical, no matter how far out, how imaginative or fantastical they think their work is. When you’re not actively writing work inspired by your lived experience, you’re not self-conscious about how much of yourself you’re injecting into the story and the characters.
You’re not worrying about what people will think of you. You’re not concerned about baring your soul and standing naked in front of all your readers, with nothing to hide behind. And because you’re not worrying about those things. Because they never cross your mind. You’re giving away far more than you ever realized. You only really realize years later when you look back on the work and it suddenly hits you how many deep, dark personal secrets you’ve given away without knowing it.
So I probably injected a ridiculous amount of myself into the characters, and I probably don’t
have enough time and distance from the story to consider just how much yet.
Me: What is your writing process? How do you stay focused on writing?
JB: My process is entirely dictated by the work. Some stories need their main beats to be worked out in advance in order for them to work. I find I’m not comfortable beginning them without knowing where I’m going in terms of the plot.
Other stories just want you to sit down and write them the minute they arrive. They know what shape they’re going to take, and they’re going to show you as you write them down. When these stories arrive, I try to find a keyboard as soon as I can because they’re pretty insistent.
Because writing is often a marathon effort, which is going to demand a lot of thought and application from you, I stay focused by writing every day. I keep up a minimum word count of 1.5k words, though sometimes I exceed that. Sometimes I can do that in a few hours; other times, when it’s not flowing, it can take me all day. But I never let myself get up from my desk and call it a day until I’ve hit my word count.
Me: Now being re-released with Crystal Lake Publishing, what was the process for having it republished?
JB: When we were putting together the Bark Bites Horror line of books, Crystal Lake’s head honcho, Joe Mynhardt, told me that he always thought Dead Scalp deserved its own individual release. I told him I agreed, so we decided to make that happen. It ended up being the seventh release in this line. The text was already edited, but Joe thought it would be a good idea to get it proofread again, in case any typos had slipped through when it was first published. When I got the proofs, as I said above, I couldn’t resist trimming the word count a little and fixing one or two sentences, making this the author’s approved version.
After all that, it was simply a matter of finding a place for it in Crystal Lake’s already jammed release schedule.
Me: What do you do to keep your creative energy flowing?
JB: I recently took up naked sky diving. Which is hell on your private parts, but it does get your adrenaline flowing. Especially when you’re so naked you don’t bother to don your parachute.
When that doesn’t work, I chant arcane incantations in a dead tongue to raise the seven dark lords of the netherworld and imprison their astral forms inside Lego minifigures. Once I’ve successfully accomplished this, I force the demonically possessed minifigures to enact well-known scenes from musical theater. Pelting them all the while with molasses-smeared cheese doodles!
If none of that works, I sit down and have a cup of tea, like every good British writer.
Me: Lastly, what else are you working on that you'd like to share with our readers? Thank you again for your time!
JB: I have a new novel coming out at the end of February 2026 called Harmed and Dangerous, which is a Southern Gothic paranormal thriller that deals with serial killers and explores father/daughter relationships.
I’m currently at work on two different novels that I can’t say anything about just yet, but keep watching this space.
Thanks so much for having me on your blog, Don. I’ve had a blast.
To follow Jasper online, check out his website below:
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