Chris Priestley Q & A (Mister Creecher): March 2012

I’m pleased to hear you say it is ambitious, because I do feel that it is.  I set out to write something that responded to Mary Shelley’s novel in a thoughtful way, whilst retaining some of the themes of the Romantics.  Of course, none of that is as important as writing a compelling story and if the book is successful, it is because of that.  But if it sends the readers off to read Mary Shelley’s book or read a Keats poem then that would be great.  As for the plan, I do have to write a synopsis when I first pitch a book but this one was easy to pitch because the notion of revisiting Frankenstein had obvious appeal.  But like most of my work, and in common with most writers, ideas and details present themselves when writing. It is such a rich seam that I could have written half a dozen different novels, all of which would have taken it off in different directions.  It was a really enjoyable experience writing it and I hope that comes across.

No, not really.  I did research the period.  I already knew a lot about Mary Shelley’s life because reading about her and her circle has been a bit of thing of mine for some time.  The more I read about the period, the more ideas that came to mind about what Billy and Mister Creecher would get up to.  I was very keen that this would not become an historical novel, even though it is – what I mean is that I did not want the history to be driving the plot.  I did not want it to be a history lesson by stealth.  Nothing – I hope – is wrong in the book, but it is set in the fictional world of the novel as much as the actual world of Regency England.  This is something I have been up to for a while now.  The Tales of Terror books are set in the world of Victorian and Edwardian ghost stories for instance.  The trick is to do all these things lightly when writing for this age group.  Otherwise you come off as a smart-arse teacher talking over their heads.  I’m sharing my enthusiasms as much as anything.  I drop clues to the stuff I’ve read and seen and if they are intrigued then good, but they can miss those things and still enjoy the book.

Well I remember being absolutely blown away by it when I first read it.  The main revelation was the fact that the creature spoke, and looked so different from the movie version.  My advice to anyone teaching this book in school is to show the students the original Boris Karloff movie from the thirties – not because it is true to the book, but because it isn’t.  That image – the Karloff creature – is so famous and familiar.  I had seen the movie and the book was therefore an exciting series of surprises about the setting, the plot and the characters.  It struck a chord with me.  The creature is quite teenagery, with his ‘I didn’t ask to be born’ rants.  But I also loved the opening (and closing) scenes in the arctic and the fact that they come to England, to places, like the Lakes, that I knew well.

If there was, I wasn’t aware of it.  I think we are probably safe now, as all the people involved are long dead.  And I don’t think I say anything bad.  I have a huge affection for Mary Shelley – and P B Shelley for that matter.  And Keats, who almost appears.  Mary’s life in particular was extraordinarily dramatic through her late teens and early twenties, mostly of the tragic variety.

I did want to write something moving, that’s for sure.  I wanted to see if I could write a Romantic novel for teens.  I think I felt that I wanted to break out of the buttoned-down world of The Dead of Winter and the Tales of Terror and do something big and bold.  It may come as a surprise to someone who thinks of me as writing chillers, but a good surprise, I hope.  I haven’t finished with chillers, by the way.  The Mask, coming out this year is very much a chiller, albeit a contemporary one.  But that is never enough with a novel – it has to have something else.  You have to care for the main character or characters.  There has to be a story.  It can’t just be a sequence of set pieces and effects.

At the moment I am considering the response of my editors to the first draft of TheMask, a novel set in Amsterdam.  It is set in the present but also involves events and characters from the seventeenth century Golden Age of Holland. Added to which, I am also pitching the book for 2013!  I don’t want to say too much about that at the moment, other than it is another contemporary novel.  There are about half a dozen things I am very keen to write.  It’s all about finding the time.  I have kicked around a few ideas for an adult novel.  I will almost certainly have a go at that.  Not because I am frustrated by writing for teens, but because certain ideas just lend themselves to a different age group.