Do you see Uncle Montague as a creepy character? Did you have fun creating him and is he based on anyone you know?
Uncle Montague gets his name from M. R. James – Montague Rhodes James – but as I wrote about him I had those greats of horror movies in mind: people like Peter Cushing, Vincent Price, John Carradine and Boris Karloff. Roald Dahl was in there too, I suppose, with his introductions to his Tales of the Unexpected television programmes.
Some people think that horror writers must be a little weird to come up with their stories. Would you agree with them?
Yes. It is weird. But writing is a weird occupation whatever you write. One of the strongest impulses for me to try to get published was that I kept thinking how weird it was to be keeping notebooks full of stories when I was not (then) a published writer.
Your next book, Mister Creecher, is a twist on the Frankenstein story. Could you tell us a little bit more about it and the inspiration behind it?
Ever since I read the book in my teens, I was fascinated by the fact that Frankenstein, his friend Clerval and the creature all come to Britain, going on a tour through London and Oxford, up into the Lakes and eventually to Scotland and the Orkney Islands (where Frankenstein will build – and then destroy – a mate for his creation). Mary Shelley whizzes through this journey in a few paragraphs, but I wanted to zoom in on the potential of having that huge, angry, vengeful monster loose in the England of 1818. Mister Creecher imagines a meeting between Frankenstein’s creature and a young street thief in Regency London and charts the strange and dangerous bond that develops between them as they leave London and head north.
Also by Chris Priestley
The Tales of Terror Collection
Uncle Montague’s Tales of Terror
Tales of Terror from the Black Ship
Tales of Terror from the Tunnel’s Mouth
* * *
Mister Creecher
More Spine-Chilling Stories from Chris Priestley
‘Wonderfully macabre and beautifully crafted horror stories’
Chris Riddell
‘Guaranteed to give you nightmares’
Observer
Haunting Bookshops Now
New from the Master of the Macabre
Can a monster and a boy ever really be friends?
Find out in this fantastically frightening gothic novel
Out Now
Bloomsbury Publishing, London, Berlin, New York and Sydney
First published in Great Britain in October 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc 49–51 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3DP
This electronic edition published in October 2011 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Text copyright © Chris Priestley 2010
Decorative illustration copyright © Chris Priestley 2010
The moral right of the author has been asserted
All rights reserved You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages
A CIP catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library
eISBN 9781 4088 2546 4
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The Dead of Winter Page 14