Chris Priestley is the exceptionally talented author of Tales of Terror books (Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror, Tales of Terror from the Black Ship, Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth and the 2011 World Book Day special, The Teacher’s Tales of Terror), and of the superb wintry chiller, The Dead of Winter. His most recent book is Mister Creecher, out now in paperback, published by Bloomsbury, £6.99. It is a superbly crafted tale of Frankenstein’s Monster and plays within its convention and constantly twists and surprises. It is his most accomplished novel. If you haven’t read his stuff, you are denying yourself a treat.
He recently took the time out of his hectic schedule to answer my questions.
Andy Jamieson, geekzine editor
Andy Jamieson: Mister Creecher is just out now in paperback. Have you been pleased with the response the book has had? It is quite different from your other books.
Chris Priestley: I have been really pleased with the response. It was very well reviewed and people seemed to get what I was trying to do. It is a bit of a departure in that it isn’t a chiller. It does contain moments of horror – perhaps more graphic than in my other books – but it is an attempt to deal with some of the issues that Mary Shelley herself was dealing with when she wrote her novel. It is a deliberate pointer towards that book. But it is also a very dangerous relationship. That is the core of the book, really – the relationship between the damaged youth, Billy, and the terrifying Mister Creecher.
AJ: Is the impetus there for you to continue the story of Mister Creecher, or Billy, or has that story run its course for you?
CP: No – that particular story is ended. But my fascination with Frankenstein has not come to an end. I would be surprised if that was my last Frankenstein-inspired book.
AJ: At the Edinburgh International Book Festival this summer, you debuted a short story you’ve written called In The Bleak Midwinter. How did that story come about and will it feature in an inter-locking collection, as with the Tales of Terror books?
CP: That story is part of an e-book collection called Christmas Tales of Terror that will come out this year. It was a lot of fun returning to the creepy short story form and it made me realise that I must do more of that. I am a natural short story writer. Some people find the restriction impedes them, but I actually find it frees me. They seem to come very naturally to me.
AJ: What other projects are you working on at the moment?
CP: I have a book called Through Dead Eyes coming out in March and we have been doing the final edit on that. Its a chiller set in Amsterdam in the present day, but in a haunted hotel, so we switch between the present and the seventeenth century. It is another departure for me because it has an awkward romance at it’s heart. That an the fact that this is the first chiller I have written that has a contemporary setting.
Through Dead Eyes, out March 2013
I have also just submitted a novel called We Pass Like Night and that book is linked to Coleridge’s The Rime of the Ancient Mariner – a work, like Frankenstein, that I have been obsessed with since I was a child. In fact, the poem gets quoted in both Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror and in Mister Creecher. We Pass Like Night is published by Bloomsbury in March 2014. I am embarking on several new ideas and I am hoping that one of them will be in large part visual, either a graphic novel, a picture book or an illustration-heavy novel of some sort.
AJ: Will you revisit the Tales of Terror series at any point, or do you feel satisfied with collection as it stands?
CP: I will revisit it and have with the Christmas Tales of Terror. But I will definitely do more if I can persuade anyone to publish them. I have also toyed with the idea of the existing Tales of Terror forming the basis of a graphic novel.
AJ: What have you read this year that has (and hasn’t) impressed you? Any recommendations?
CP: I have revisited a couple of Wilkie Collins books recently – The Moonstone and The Woman in White – and I’d recommend either of those. I have become a bit an audiobook convert and I loved Donna Tartt reading True Grit. The book was fantastic. I’d only ever seen the movie (the original), but Tartt’s reading of it is also lovely. I’ve also been listening to some obscure Edgar Allan Poe stories and some classic M R James stories beautifully read by Derek Jacobi. I picked up a compendium of Edward Gorey recently – I thought I had them all – and was reminded of what a genius he was.
The collection Christmas Tales of Terror will be out before Christmas as a Bloomsbury e-book.
Follow the fantastic Mr Priestley at his blog: chrispriestley.blogspot.com.
Many thanks to Chris.
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