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Nick Gifford has been writing for as long as he can remember – much of his earlier work, short stories and adult novels, was published under the name of Keith Brooke. His writing reflects his dark sense of fun and love of horror.
THE BASICS
Born Dovercourt, Essex in 1966
Jobs: Designing & managing websites
Lives: Brightlingsea, Essex
First Book for Young adults: Piggies, 2003
THE BOOK Piggies is a hugely original novel in which a freak storm transports Ben to a parallel world inhabited by vampires. He joins others like him, known as ferals, to hide from the vampires until a meeting with Rachel, a vampire more human than some of the ferals, gives him some hope of escape. She takes him to her farm where he discovers the terrible secret that gives the novel its title.
WHAT HE SAYS…
“I started writing for younger readers by chance. After years of writing for an adult audience a friend persuaded me to aim for a different age group – I had a go and found that I loved it! It took me right back to the thrills of reading as a kid: the sense of discovery, the sheer wonder of stepping into another world through the pages of a book. I’ve never had so much fun writing. Piggies probably shows what a dark sense of fun I have…”
On where ideas come from: “All over the place. From stories in the news, from conversations with friends, from non-fiction books and magazines, from throwaway ideas that don’t quite fit in another of my stories, from overheard snippets of conversation. Usually, a finished story is very different from the original idea that has set me working on it.”
Advice: “Finish what you start. Most people don’t realise that writing can be hard work: if they do start to write, they give up long before they finish. Writing can be great fun and, yes, it can be easy at times, but professionals know to keep writing even when it gets hard.”
“I found it (Piggies) a great read. It was a mix of horror and fantasy with touches of ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and ‘Schindler’s List’. (Penguin rep.)
“Nick Gifford is an exceptional new talent in children’s literature and, in his debut children’s novel Piggies, he has created a bold, shocking and completely unputdownable horror story.” (Waterstone’s Books)
“A contemporary horror tale to sink your teeth into.” (The Funday Times)
PLACE AND DATE OF BIRTH:
Dovercourt, Essex in 1966 FAVOURITE BOOK:
So many! John Wyndham's The Day of the Triffids, F Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby, Robert Silverberg's Dying Inside. This could be a very long list... MOST TREASURED POSSESSION
Photos of my children when they were younger and the computer back-ups of my work - most other things can be replaced. FAVOURITE SONG:
Current favourites include almost anything by Clearlake, They Might Be Giants, The Colorblind James Experience or the Beatles. FAVOURITE FILM:
Pulp Fiction or When Harry Met Sally. When did you start writing?
About five minutes ago. Oh... I see what you mean... I've written stories for as long as I can remember although, thankfully, most of my early attempts are long lost. Outside school I didn't read or write much at all by my mid-teens, but when I was seventeen I started reading trashy horror novels to fill time on a wet holiday in Yorkshire. Almost immediately, I started to make notes about how I'd have written them differently, and before long I started writing my own short stories and novels. Many of these were published under another name, before I started writing as Nick Gifford in the late 1990s.
Where do you get your ideas?
All over the place. From stories in the news, from conversations with friends, from non-fiction books and magazines, from throwaway ideas that don't quite fit in another of my stories, from overheard snippets of conversation. Usually, a finished story is very different from the original idea that set me working on it.
Can you give your top three tips to becoming a successful author?
1. Start writing. Lots of people who claim they have a book in them never actually sit down and write it.
2. Finish what you start. Most people don't realise that writing can be hard work: if they do start to write, they give up long before they finish. Writing can be great fun and, yes, it can be easy at times, but professionals know to keep writing even when it gets hard.
3. When you've finished, start something else. With every piece you write you will become a better writer, and most of us have to cope with a lot of rejections before we write something good enough to be published.
Favourite memory?
The chocolates I ate an hour ago. I have a short memory, and I'm easily pleased.
Favourite place in the world and why?
The beach and salt-marshes at Hamford Water in Essex. A complete wilderness, only an hour's walk from where I grew up - wonderful!
What are your hobbies?
I don't have much time outside my work, but if I did I'd spend more of it birdwatching and playing my guitar.
If you hadn't been a writer, what do you think you would have been?
Still trying to be a writer. And while I kept trying to be a writer I'd be designing and managing websites, which I have done professionally for several years.
As an established writer for adults what made you decide to write for children?
My good friend, Eric Brown, who writes for adults and children, persuaded me to have a go. I wrote proposals for two short stories, sold them, and suddenly had to learn how to write for a different age group ... and I found that I loved it. It took me write back to those days when I was a kid and I would read all day long. I really should have got out more.
In what way does writing for adults differ from writing for children?
Probably the main difference is that you have to cut down a lot on the sex and violence. For the adults, that is - they just can't handle it.
What interests you about and why did you decide to write in the horror genre?
It's great to be paid to do the things you enjoy. I just happen to enjoy scaring children.
You seem particularly interested in alternative realities, where does the inspiration for this come from?
I like playing games with my readers. Working in alternative realities, everything might appear normal but then all I have to do is prod it in the right place and the ground shifts beneath the reader's feet and everything is different. If you change reality you change the rules, too, and it's a great way of putting my characters in difficult situations and seeing how they react. You can see this towards the end of Flesh and Blood, where Matt suddenly sees a way to get out of a tricky situation -- what he has to do is quite awful in our terms, but by the rules of his alternative reality it all makes perfect sense. It still gives me the creeps to think about that scene.
Which other authors in the horror genre do you enjoy reading?
The important ones when I was discovering horror were John Wyndham, Stephen King and James Herbert. There are a lot of fine horror authors appearing all over the place in small magazines and anthologies, as well as in the more obvious places: people like Graham Joyce, Nicholas Royle, Joyce Carol Oates, Douglas Clegg. Ian McEwan, not generally seen as a
horror author, has written some of the most disturbing, dark fiction I've encountered. I could go on, but I probably shouldn't.
Your books can be quite 'violent/gory', what would be your defence if someone critised violence in books for children?
I read lots of scary books when I was younger and look how I turned out. Hang on ... maybe that's not the best defence.
More seriously, experiencing extremes teaches you a lot about yourself and can make you a better person. Doing this through the pages of a book has to be preferable to the real thing, in most cases!
Where do you do your writing and do you have any superstitions like using the same pen etc?
I have a desk in the corner of my bedroom, with a computer, printer and a chaotic mess of notes and print-outs. I keep a few ego-props nearby -- cover roughs for the next book, a fantastic framed cover by Dominic Harman from one of my books -- just to remind me when I'm struggling that I can actually do this writing thing.
Do you read other children's authors and if so who are your favourites?
Eoin Colfer's great, and I thought Julia Green's first novel, Blue Moon, was fantastic. I loved John Wyndham's work years ago, and I re-read his The Day of the Triffids recently and still enjoyed it. John Christopher is another author I loved -- I can trace wanting to be a writer back to reading his Tripods trilogy -- and I've been collecting his books again over the last couple of years, so that one day I can re-read them.
Of all the cute and cuddly puppies and kittens you could have chosen, why did you choose to keep vampire bats as pets!?
Ah ... I had to come clean about that one recently. I made it up. I decided to do a "Ten things you never knew about Nick" feature on my website and I was struggling for interesting things. So I pretended that I keep pet vampire bats at the bottom of the garden -- I even gave them names: Mr Lugosi, Harker and Flopsy. If there's one question I've been asked more than any other over the last year, it's "Do you really keep vampire bats?" I repeat: it is not true.
Mr L, Harker and Flopsy are, in fact, fruit bats of the sub-order Megachiroptera. Sorry.
Tell us about the Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror website that you are involved in? Back in 1997 I had the bright idea of launching infinity plus www.infinityplus.co.uk, an online showcase for myself (under my other writing name, Keith Brooke) and a few fellow authors. The Web was still new then, and most writers didn't really understand it. So when I offered to do all the work in putting the site together there was an enthusiastic response and the thing just started to grow. The site now has nearly one and a half million words of fiction, plus lots of interviews, reviews and other features. Contributors include a lot of the big names in SF, Fantasy and Horror -- Michael Moorcock, Jack Vance,
Connie Willis, Kim Stanley Robinson and many more -- and we've published two spin-off print anthologies, too.
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