CHRISTOPHER FOWLER MESSAGE BOARD

Christopher Fowler is the author of many acclaimed novels and collections. His most recent releases include the novel CALABASH and the collection PERSONAL DEMONS.

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91 Fri January 12 2001 - 20:53:34
Fullname: Christopher Fowler
Email: chris@cfowler.demon.co.uk
Comments: Christopher here - I'd like to pick your brains! I'm thinking of editing an anthology of horror stories, and would like to find a particular area or subject that you feel has not been covered by other anthos. It could be tales about the living dead, or something far more unusual; any ideas or suggestions?
Also, I recently got a pretty poisonous review on the MOT website for 'Personal Demons', apparently because I knocked Stephen King and, by extension, US horror, so I'd just like to set the record straight. Far from being against US horror, a great many of my all-time favourite authors are American, (there have been some wonderful stateside novels lately, although they are not always billed as horror) but it seems that one criticises Mr. King's writing style on pain of death. He's written some brilliant books - I just think that something like 'The Green Mile' does not translate easily to readers in the rest of the world. What do you think?
Next - where have all the great horror movies gone? The last original horror film I saw was 'Anatomy', a brilliant German creepie that Columbia-Tristar don't seem to be bothering to release. However, you can get the uncut DVD in English from any good German website.
One more thing - I need a catchy title for a new Bryant & May novel in which gruesome murders occur in London's Palace Theatre during a production of 'Orpheus In The Underworld'. Anyone who comes up with a title I can use gets a signed first edition and a mention in the book. Cheers - CRF



92 Tue January 09 2001 - 02:30:17
Fullname: Paul Priest
Email: nicky.priest@ntlworld.com
Comments: Just finished Calabash, and spookily enough my four year old son has cut the cover of nicky's new edition of "Uncut" with his plastic pinking shears making it look more artistic!!!
Loved the "Norman Wisdom" story, even the tiny details were so acute,like a fanatic of Hancock misremembering "The Blood Donor's" doctor (The great Patrick Cargill, star of that enfuriating farce "Boeing Boeing" and the bewildering "Father dear Father", and not John Le Mesurier) it really added to the menace...
I used to work as a trainee Catholic Priest in Aylesbury, and remember the night the Allies invaded the Gulf, the curate I worked with was a sadistic twisted individual, who was chaplain to Stoke Mandeville Hospital (which was to be one of the main treatment centres for the air-lifted military casualities)... In the early hours of the morning the newsflash declared the war had started - I ran downstairs to tell him - and the malevollent exaltation in his eyes, the joy of the impending camera crews, the articles he would write of the horrific injuries and life-stories of the dying filled his visage...the evil I saw in that face that night has been with me for these past ten years...if you could hear the way he treated some of the parishioners in their grief and isolation !!! Then you would know what I mean - and although he didn't kill anyone, he was remarkably akin to that hospital visitor in the story...


93 Mon January 08 2001 - 20:47:56
Fullname: kevin etheridge
Email: kevinetheridge@kevk.freeserve.co.uk
Comments: hi, just to let you all know, Chris is alive and well, and has been on holiday....... loads coming soon, and a website apparently "christopherfowler.co.uk" - it's not there yet, but I'm told it will be soon - take care and all the best......kevin


94 Sun December 17 2000 - 23:31:39
Fullname: Chloe Yates
Email: chloe.yates@cableinet.co.uk
Comments: Hello, it seems very hard not to sound like a sycophant on these list thingies, but I'll give it a go! I'm not really quite sure what to say except that you write fine stories, Mr Fowler. It's almost impossible to put the blasted things down once you've started. Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you for brightening my day with your "cheery" tales, and that thanks to reading your short story "On Edge" I, a lifelong dentist addict (don't ask!) has become a little less willing to get in the chair!!



95 Mon November 27 2000 - 07:30:21
Fullname: Christopher Fowler
Email: chris@cfowler.demon.co.uk
Comments: I've been off-line for a couple of weeks but have a few comments about everything below - updates and queries answered later this week, and I'll also explain what I'm doing teaming up with Frederick Forsyth (unlikely match if ever there was one!)
- Christopher


96 Fri November 17 2000 - 22:54:39
Fullname: Brad Gullickson
Email: bmg@drcasey.com
Comments: Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. It's good to see that your busy with your writing and I can't wait for the new stuff.

On a side note, I'm a University student here in the states and I've been taking a class on the Horror Short Story. We were assigned to read your story "Learning To Let Go" and it really blew most of my classmates away. I managed to point their noses in your direction and I know at least one guy in the class picked up PERSONAL DEMONS.


97 Fri November 17 2000 - 20:53:44
Fullname: kevin etheridge
Email: kevinetheridge@kevk.freeserve.co.uk
Comments: Brad - a message from Chris Fowler that he sent me in answer to your very same question ; "Bit of confusion there, I'm afraid. 'Something For Your Monkey' is the title of one of the stories in 'The Devil In Me', the collection from Serpent's Tail. I'm working on two novels at once, 'Rainy Day Boys' and 'infernal', as
well as numerous screenplays which are very time-consuming. It's that short-story time of the year, so I've been writing loads of new ones, and doing something for the Dazed & Confused Christmas Annual which might turn out to be a laugh. I forgot Guy Fawkes' night was tonight until I saw a rocket land on my car this morning - the joys of urban life! - sent to me by chris on the day he describes. best wishes
,kevin



98 Thu November 16 2000 - 03:21:44
Fullname: Brad Gullickson
Email: bmg@drcasey.com
Comments: Chris, I just finished reading your story "At Home in the Pubs of Old London" in the Dark Terrors 5 antho and I just loved it. But something of interest caught my eye in your bio at the end of the story. It says that Serpent's Tail has just released a collection of your stories called SOMETHING FOR YOUR MONKEY. Is this true? If so I can't find a copy anywhere, not even on the net, the place where I buy most of your books.


99 Sat October 28 2000 - 15:02:21
Fullname: Paul Ivan James Christopher Priest
Email: nicky.priest@ntlworld.com
Comments: Sir,
You are a phenomena....I've just bought my wife "darkest day" after a mad six-month hunt for a copy- almost everyone in the old meat factory I worked in read my copy of Disturbia - and whenever I go out at the bottom of my backpack are my battered signed copies of spanky and soho black
We've yet to venture into you're short stories and we've read everyone of your novels except Red Bride and the new one that sounds like gallowglass (but isn't) main reason is availability of copies - most of your books are out of print at amazon.com and most "good" bookshops wouldn't know a good book if it gave them a three course meal, a room at the ritz and a rare tropical "social" disease....
My wife worries about me a bit though - with the photo of Fitz Koch on the front of Spanky - and my predilection to reading it on buses and trains
I have had an inordinate amount of passes,winks,offers of a room for the night by gentlemen of variable ages and social classes!!!!! Ever thought of trying to get Rupert Everett to play Spanky for you ? Not a perfect match I know but he'd love to play the part....As for martyn? you could do no worse than me for no-one could possibly know more about failure than me...enough! Read one of your interviews yesterday - you're right about soho black being much better than disturbia - But Disturbia will be brilliant when you've tweaked around with the script and collaborated with a real riddler for the clues.... I've been telling my friend in Japan about you for years but he's so obsessed with Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell he just doesn't want to know. I also wrote a little review of Spanky at Amazon , but they won't use it. My wife Idolizes you... I've been trying to get her to read Dostoyevsky, and Chomsky and Chesterton and The Amber Series but all to no avail while your books are in the house (Did manage to call my son after the Zelazny hero - Jamie Corwin Listener - (The Listener is from Hans Bemmann's The stone and the flute - brilliant book (Have you also read Otfried Preussler's "The Satanic Mill" ? A children's book but absolutely brilliant - you could use it as a plot thread???)))
Sorry if I'm boring you rigid - will be watching sci-fi on Nov 3
Be Happy - and thanks for years of enjoyment !!!


100 Sat October 28 2000 - 14:59:54
Fullname: Paul Ivan James Christopher Priest
Email: nicky.priest@ntlworld.com
Comments: Sir,
You are a phenomena....I've just bought my wife "darkest day" after a mad six-month hunt for a copy- almost everyone in the old meat factory I worked in read my copy of Disturbia - and whenever I go out at the bottom of my backpack are my battered signed copies of spanky and soho black
We've yet to venture into you're short stories and we've read everyone of your novels except Red Bride and the new one that sounds like gallowglass (but isn't) main reason is availability of copies - most of your books are out of print at amazon.com and most "good" bookshops wouldn't know a good book if it gave them a three course meal, a room at the ritz and a rare tropical "social" disease....
My wife worries about me a bit though - with the photo of Fitz Koch on the front of Spanky - and my predilection to reading it on buses and trains
I have had an inordinate amount of passes,winks,offers of a room for the night by gentlemen of variable ages and social classes!!!!! Ever thought of trying to get Rupert Everett to play Spanky for you ? Not a perfect match I know but he'd love to play the part....As for martyn? you could do no worse than me for no-one could possibly know more about failure than me...enough! Read one of your interviews yesterday - you're right about soho black being much better than disturbia - But Disturbia will be brilliant when you've tweaked around with the script and collaborated with a real riddler for the clues.... I've been telling my friend in Japan about you for years but he's so obsessed with Clive Barker and Ramsey Campbell he just doesn't want to know. I also wrote a little review of Spanky at Amazon , but they won't use it. My wife Idolizes you... I've been trying to get her to read Dostoyevsky, and Chomsky and Chesterton and The Amber Series but all to no avail while your books are in the house (Did manage to call my son after the Zelazny hero - Jamie Corwin Listener - (The Listener is from Hans Bemmann's The stone and the flute - brilliant book (Have you also read Otfried Preussler's "The Satanic Mill" ? A children's book but absolutely brilliant - you could use it as a plot thread???)))
Sorry if I'm boring you rigid - will be watching sci-fi on Nov 3
Be Happy - and thanks for years of enjoyment !!!


101 Sat October 28 2000 - 03:36:37
Fullname: Vincent Goodacre
Email: VG83845@yahoo.com
Comments: The SciFi Channel show EXPOSURE will be reshowing ON EDGE November 3rd. All of you USA Chris Fowler fans who missed it the first time around should be sure to see it! Great film.

Cheers,
VG


102 Fri October 27 2000 - 19:19:30
Fullname: David Lloyd
Email: david@chapelfarm.freeserve.co.uk
Comments: Hello Christopher,
I was interested that you are going to use a different name for a "more serious, literate novel". I think that all the work I've read of yours has been both serious and literate. Iain Banks has said that he regrets putting the "M" into his name, because it gives more power to the elbow of critics who like to dismiss genre fiction, but, saying that, you deserve a Booker nomination and I suppose you're not going to get that on the horror shelves .
I read Calabash sometime ago and thoroughly enjoyed it, but something has been bothering me. When I first put the book down I thought that you were dismissing imagination as an escapist, adolescent trait. Something which must be thrown away as we grow out of childish things. Then I was reading Angela Carters intro to de la Mares "Memoirs of a Midget", inwhich she seems to make a distinction between two sorts of imagination; one escapist, the other political (it reshapes the real world).I remembered that at the end of Calabash the main character notices that the seaside architecture has an eastern influence, as if the world of Calabash, the world of his imagination has blended with the real world and it occured to me that maybe you were making the same distinction between these two sorts of imagination. One that is inward-looking, self-indulgant,masturbation and the other which is outward-looking and engages with the world in a creative way.Am I right ?
David lloyd.





103 Tue October 17 2000 - 14:15:54
Fullname: Rhys
Email:
Comments: Christopher: in case you're interested and don't already know -- Savoy have just republished Richardson's Engelbrecht stories. I mention this here because you have been one of the dwarf's rare champions.


104 Mon October 09 2000 - 11:51:57
Fullname: Suzanne Donahue
Email: suzanne_donahue@hotmail.com
Comments: Dear Mr. Fowler: I have an anthology I'd love to have you to participate in, if you're interested. Please drop me an e-mail when it's convenient. Thanks!


105 Sun September 24 2000 - 19:05:05
Fullname: Mark McLaughlin
Email: tigerbaron@email.com
Comments: I wasn't trying to answer for Mr. Fowler there -- I wouldn't be that presumptuous! And who knows, maybe some of his business associates have to do a comb-over to hide their horns! What do I know? Nothing! My two-volt brain can barely remember my own name! I just wanted to point out that a person can write about evil without being evil, just as someone can write about...well, anything...without actually doing it! That's why it's called *speculative* fiction...


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