Lee Glenwright is a Sunderland-based British writer, known for his dark atmospheric fiction stories. His third full novel “Penance” delves into themes of guilt, redemption, and the supernatural. He’s also known for his short story anthologies, similarly themed along the dark and horror paved roads of his mind.
His stories often explore the darker sides of human nature, weaving complex characters into morally ambiguous situations. “Penance” is a prime example of that, featuring intricate storytelling that blurs the lines between reality and the supernatural, making it a standout in modern horror literature. Glenwright’s ability to create tension and unease, combined with his deep exploration of the human psyche, has definitely earned him my support and loyalty.
A serendipitous discovery
I’m a recent devotee of his – he arrived in my consciousness quite by accident one day on the social media platform Threads. Scrolling through (as you do) I happened upon a Thread in which he said “Please read my books”. A quick Amazon search later, I asked him in which order I should read them. Much to my amazement, he replied (with a loose order of reading). I started with “Insatiable” and that was it, I was totally hooked.
His storytelling is everything I want from a horror author. It’s dark, it’s complicated, it’s absolutely horrible in places – places that made me go “eeeeew” or made me flinch. More than once.
So that was it – one book binge later and here I am having just finished his latest full novel “Penance”. A novel that shows no sign of Glenwright flagging in any way shape or form. In fact, he’s already started his next one.
Who is Lee Glenwright?
This is from his author bio:
Despite his choice of subject matter, Lee Glenwright describes himself as, the nicest person called Lee Glenwright you could ever hope to meet. His dark fiction has been published in multiple anthologies.
Additionally, he has published the novels, Mutt, Insatiable, and Meat Puppets: A Novel of Fragments, as well as two collections, Ripe and Others, and Little Wounds and Other Dark Tales.
Lee lives in North East England, with his family, far too many reptiles, and a dark sense of humour. He likes to listen to loud, nasty music, watch old, nasty movies, and gloat over his EC horror comics collection from time to time.
In a bid to discover more, I asked him a couple of questions…
Lee Glenwright spills the beans!
I (TRM) asked Lee some questions, Lee (LG) answered:
TRM: We know a little bit about Lee Glenwright the author, but who was Lee Glenwright before he became an author? What was your early life like growing up in Sunderland?
LG: Oh Jesus, my early life? That was a long time ago now! I’ve always had some sort of creative streak for as far back as I can remember. Like I imagine it to be for a lot of writers, I first started taking the idea of slinging my thoughts onto a page seriously in my teens. Back then, my writing was probably little more than an outlet for teenage angst, most of my limited output stumbling from one outrageous scene of gore to the next – pretty basic stuff. I remember that I started out writing longhand, the old fashioned way, with a notepad and pencil – I’d get excited each time I filled a sheet of paper without tearing it out and pitching it into the nearest bin. Then, when I was about sixteen and fresh out of school, an aunt procured me a second-hand typewriter, one of those old-school, clunky things that would probably be weighty enough to collapse most modern desks. I probably got some perverse sense of enjoyment from knowing the sense of discomfort that I could create in others by hammering down on the keys, only stopping at intervals to slam the paper carriage back into place. Maybe there’s an element of Frank Popper in there somewhere (haha).
I’ve lived in Sunderland with my family for most of my adult life, but I was actually raised in nearby South Shields, a coastal town nestled between Sunderland and Newcastle. I think it’s pretty fair to say that I was a bit of a stereotypical nerd as a kid. At school, I kept a close circle of friends who (I hope) could understand the workings of my mind. Then, once I moved onto college and university, I finally started to meet people with similar interests to my own – nasty movies, nasty music, comics, all things dark and spooky. I also discovered alcohol (ha!), so that’s probably where things started to go downhill!
At school, my favourite subjects, as well as the ones I was best at, were English and Art. Someone, perhaps a career officer, led me to believe that the big money was in science, so I ended up doing my degree in Biology. Go figure.
TRM: What was the catalyst that kicked it all off, what made you want to write? At what age did you first encounter the notion of writing?
LG: I used to read a lot when I was young, probably because I often found it easier to live inside my own head most of the time – I was a token awkward introvert, something that some people might say has never changed! The local library was a haven, one of the main reasons that I find it so disheartening that many local councils have brought about the closure of a lot of the smaller branch libraries. At the risk of sounding old, it makes me sad to think that there are so many kids today who will never get that same experience. When I was ten, I wrote a story that ended up being selected for a local competition, the Catherine Cookson Short Story competition. I ended up winning with my two page, dystopian sci-fi effort – a pretty big deal to a kid who wasn’t used to winning anything (nothing’s changed in that regard!). It was enough, even then, to put into my head the idea that there was actually something that I could perhaps do quite well. Some kids grow up wanting to see their name in lights, I wanted to see mine on the cover of a book.
Influence-wise, one of my early memories is of raking through the fiction section at my local library. I stumbled across a bunch of anthologies edited by Helen Hoke. With names like ‘Tales of Fear and Frightening Phenomena,’ ‘Ghastly, Grim and Gruesome,’ and, ‘Spooky, Spooky, Spooky,’ it’s no surprise to guess the themes contained within. Although aimed at younger readers, they featured authors such as Ray Bradbury, Robert Bloch, and HP Lovecraft. To my mind, Bloch is a master of the short story, with his knack for the twisted, pitch-black one-liner style ending (if you haven’t already, I recommend that you track down a short story of his, ‘The Night Before Christmas’), whilst Bradbury is still one of my all-time favourite authors. Best known for his fantasy, some of his earlier work pulls no punches in the nastiness department. One of my earliest memories of a story from the genre having a real impact on me is Bradbury’s The Whole Town’s Sleeping, which I originally read in one of those Helen Hoke anthologies. The feeling that story evoked has never left me.
TRM: In your blog posts you speak about the voices in your head (that will not stop) and how you used writing as a therapy for some dark times you were experiencing. Now that you’re in a better headspace, has that changed your inspirations and attitudes towards plots and characters?
LG: Haha – bloody hell, I hope not! Yeah, in my bio I usually slip in a phrase along the lines of, ‘the voices get louder if I stop writing for too long.’ Although admittedly flippant, there’s still a germ of truth in that. Writing is a good form of therapy, especially when the work involves nasty people and situations. It’s helped me through some low points over the years. I suffered quite a few setbacks during and immediately following the Covid lockdowns. I think that I probably figured the same as a lot of other people in the early days; isolation – brilliant! Plenty of time to get so much stuff done. But you probably know as well as I do, that’s not how things worked out. Instead, life found its way of taking over, as all of the day to day boredoms and frustrations set in. It felt like I had all the time in the world, but time and motivation aren’t the same thing. I started to get those doubts creeping in, the, what if I can never do this again? and, why do I bother, no one’s reading anyway? For a time, I seriously thought that any idea of writing had run its course. I had to force myself to focus, to get things up and running again. Fortunately, I managed it. After a while, things started to become a little less forced as those voices that for so long had nagged at me, telling me that I couldn’t do it, finally started to listen to who was really in charge and backing the hell off. It’s a pretty corny, almost clichéd way of putting things, but it does feel sometimes as though the words are spoken to me somewhere I my head, I just need to manage them.
TRM: I’m sure you’ve been asked many times, but speaking of inspirations, do you draw any inspiration from real people, or real-life situations for your stories?
LG: Yes. Sorry, that’s the short answer. It’s a strange one really because, it’s not something that I consciously make an effort to do. I’ve usually had the attitude to writing that, at the end of the day, its fiction, its fantasy, nothing more, and fantasy should really be an escape. As usual though, that’s not how things work out. I’ve often read back something that I’ve written after the fact, only to realise that it was inspired by some random real world event, whether it was some personal experience, or something that I’d seen in the news. Inspiration sometimes comes from unexpected places. For instance, the story Stick, from my debut collection Ripe, and Others, was inspired by a weird sidebar news story that I chanced across in a newspaper. A lot of my stories start off with what I call a What If? Scenario. For example, at the climax of the W W Jacobs story The Monkey’s Paw, what might have happened if the old woman had opened that door unhindered? Over time, I have found that more of my personal experiences have crept their way into my writing, sometimes perhaps a little more than I’m comfortable with. Better out than in though, right? Like I said before, writing is the best therapy, it’s also a pretty good form of exorcism. Yeah, there have been some elements of reality that have crept into my writing. The game is for the reader to try and decide where they are (rubs hands together gleefully). Sometimes, fictional violence can be a form of wish fulfilment. Don’t let that put you off, I’m a nice person – honest!
TRM: Penance is your third full novel. Before Penance however, you’ve written three anthologies and contributed to several publications with short stories. How has your writing evolved since those first short stories?
LG: Everyone is probably pretty self-critical of their work, and I’m no different. I still look back at some of my early writing and ask myself, what was I thinking? On the plus side though, I do think that I have finally found my own voice as a writer. I started out, like most writers, aping my influences to some degree, whether consciously or unconsciously. It’s how we learn, right? When I started writing what became Mutt, my debut novel, I determined to work on developing my own style, something that I consider quite informal, conversational and quite dialogue-focused, despite still being descriptive. With the exception of Penance, all of my previous novels and several short stories are set in the same fictional place. That removal from reality has allowed me to build something that I hope can be pictured in the imagination with greater ease, though description alone. I made the deliberate choice to leave the fictional city featured in several of my novels unnamed. Doing so, in my mind, leaves it up to the reader to fill in the blanks; it could be anywhere you want, anywhere that it sounds like to you. It sort of becomes a character in the story in its own right.
In terms of evolution, it’s strange; when I first started to take the idea of writing seriously, I focused exclusively of short fiction. I could never imagine myself producing anything over a 10,000 word limit. Nowadays, I’ve found that I’ve found it easier and more rewarding to work in a novel format. It just gives so much more scope to flesh out characters and situations. If you’d told me just a few years ago that I’d feel that way, I would’ve laughed at you, albeit nervously. I like to think that, as my writing continues, it’ll continue to evolve. There’s always room for growth and improvement. It’s certainly a million miles away from the teenager who wrote simply to see how far he could go before grossing himself out. I’m still not averse to a bit of gore or violence, but I like to think that it’s more justified now. I still want to disturb readers, but I still want to tell the best story of which I’m capable, with the best characters that I’m able to create. Something that I’m fond of saying is that, at the end of the day I’m just a storyteller, and they’re just stories. If a reader gets something out of them then that’s good enough for me. More book sales wouldn’t hurt either though!
TRM: Do you find that certain stories, or parts of stories are challenging to write? You’ve mentioned that when writing Penance, it was almost becoming autobiographical, what were the challenges around that and have there been any other challenging moments?
LG: I don’t think that I’ve found my own limitations yet. I used to shy away from writing anything sexual in my fiction, not because I’m a prude (!) but because I considered sex something difficult to write. It’s easy to conjure up something to gross a reader out, but if written badly, sex has a real tendency to come across (no pun intended) as forced and cringeworthy. There are some things that I won’t even consider writing about, but ultimately, everyone sets their own boundaries, whether a reader or a writer. If you write something that extends outside of your comfort zone, then it ends up showing.
TRM: How different are your first drafts compared to the final version? Do you make big changes between versions, or is the final version almost the same as the first draft?
LG: Well, in the initial stages at least, I’m usually a pantser, a weird term, but the best one that applies. I usually start with an idea and run with it, just to see where it’ll take me. For example, with Penance, I honestly had no idea how it was going to end until about three quarters of the way through the initial draft. My first goal is to get the story out, even if it’s just the bare bones of it. After that, I can go back through it, fleshing out characters, adding and taking away, correcting typos – a must, since I’m not a trained typist – that sort of thing. With that in mind, the final draft often ends up being considerably longer than the first, as well as often radically different. Penance originally started out as a failed draft of a debut novella called Down the Highway, written about eight or nine years ago now. At the time, I didn’t feel capable of carrying something that length, so it was shelved away. Apart from a few key elements, the baby version and the final product don’t have very much in common. I might still have a copy of the original manuscript filed away somewhere, now I’m curious to sneak a look and over-criticise it.
TRM: Finally, a question about feedback. Do you get much feedback from your stories? I know I’ve personally written some Amazon reviews and spoken a couple of times on Threads.
LG: Like any independent author, I depend on feedback and reviews. It’s always good to know that someone has gotten something out of my work, either positive or negative. When I’ve submitted short fiction to anthologies in the past, I’ve always been fortunate enough to have some really good experiences with editors. When you go it alone, that part can be lacking sometimes so, yeah, it’s always nice to hear something back. When my first piece of short fiction was accepted for publication, a relative who happened to teach an English class used it for her students to examine the structure and themes. I was intrigued to read what they made of it. While it was fascinating to see some of the interpretations, I responded with my view; you only ever get out of a story what you put into it. I’m a storyteller, I’m just sharing my words, how you choose to read them is up to you. That’s all we do, tell stories. Oh, thanks for all the kind words by the way!
TRM: Lee, thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, it’s been a pleasure to ask them.
LG: Thanks for taking the time to ask the questions, it’s been my pleasure.
TRM: Good luck with the next novel (provisionally?) titled “Bad Day”, publishing early 2025.
LG: Haha – early might be a stretch, but thanks again.
His books are available to buy on Amazon in both Kindle and physical format. Do yourself a favour and read some, you won’t regret it.
