I have seen the future of horror

I was interviewed by the Sunday Mercury today. They were going to call yesterday but instead sent me an email with a string of questions for me to answer and send back.

One of the questions was about Clive Barker. In the early 1980s I designed posters for Clive's Dog Company theatre group. This was before he was a superstar writer and director living in Beverly Hills - we were both living in slightly less glamorous north London.

I'm sad to say that I lost touch with Clive. I am, and always have been, quite useless at keeping in regular contact with people - even people like Clive, who I like very much.

And of course the trouble with losing touch with someone who subsequently becomes rich and famous, is that any effort to get back in touch simply looks like you are after something. Which is really not in my mind at all. The fact that I never got paid for any of those posters is really not important. . .

I'm hoping we'll meet at some publishers thing. There are people I know I will meet again. Clive is definitely one of them. But in the meantime, Clive - should you see this - a nice review wouldn't kill you, would it? For old times sake. . .

Clive's life changed with the publication of his Books of Blood short story collections and the licence-to-print-money-quote they garnered from Stephen King - 'I have seen the future of horror and his name is Clive Barker'

Stephen - if you are reading this - any chance of me getting something similar? I'm not expecting anything quite so monumental. How about a simple 'I've seen the future of fairly creepy stories for older children and young adults and his name is - or at least could be - Chris Priestley.'

Hook the undead

I stayed at home today, both in order to take a call from Lorne Jackson at Birmingham's Sunday Mercury newspaper who wants to do an interview with me for a Halloween feature, and so that I can knuckle down and get the revisions done on Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth.


The website for Tales of Terror from the Black Ship went live today. If 'live' is quite the right word, given that Adrian has devised a game called 'Corpse Fishing' for the site. Go and have a look and while away a few moments hooking the undead.


You know you want to.

The man in the picture

I was volunteered to be the linesman at my son's football match and managed to miss two offside decisions, gifting the opposition two goals they would not otherwise have had. Excellent.

I decided to do a little research on adult horror fiction when I went to London on Friday and bought a selection of books I may review at a later date. I read the beginning of all of them, but the only one that compelled me to carry on was Susan Hill's The Man in the Picture.

Now this may not be surprising. There is a strong link with my latest writing here. The story concerns a Cambridge scholar talking to an old student - and Hill must have had M R James in mind. The story itself - involving a creepy painting of a carnival scene in Venice - is very much in M R James territory.

But the appeal lies in the quality of the writing. Susan Hill does this kind of thing brilliantly. It is short - almost an extended short story - and I haven't finished it yet, but what a lovely thing it is so far.

That's not my name!

OK - I might not be famous, but J B Priestley and Joseph Priestley are and we all have an 'e' before that 'y'. Why do so many people want to spell it without? Huh? Huh? Huh?

I went to London today to do a turn at a Youth Libraries Group event next to Euston Station. Emma Bradshaw was my contact from Bloomsbury and once we had met and been badged up, we sat and listened to a very good talk by Julia Eccleshare from the Guardian. Julia's enthusiasm for children's books is evident in everything she says and she has been a great champion of them in her newspaper.

The Guardian's redesigned Saturday Review carries much less coverage of children's books than it used to, which is a great shame - particularly as it devotes a huge amount of space to items of questionable value (that means you, Audrey Niffenegger and your Night Badlydrawnmobile)

It was a chance to say hello again to Celia Rees whom I had met in Edinburgh. She gave an interesting talk about her new book Sovay, talking about the book and about her working method, which seemed very similar to mine when I write historical fiction.

In fact it was a very interesting experience to see other authors speak. Everyone has a different technique and people obviously vary a huge amount in confidence. Some have a very prepared speech and others - myself included - hoof it a little. The latter technique can backfire, of course, and I am beginning to wonder if I ought to write myself a script. The thing that stops me is the dread of sounding like some after dinner speaker with pre-prepared anecdotes and scripted ad-libs. But perhaps that's better than sounding like a babbling old twit.

We were all limited to twenty minutes, which is pretty tight when people want to have the chance to ask questions. I felt sorry for Debi Gliori and Marcia Williams who both needed more time really to get the concepts of their picture books across. It was nice to see Debi's rough work - it is always fascinating to see how another illustrator works. I didn't get a chance to see Sophie Mackenzie as we were on at the same time, though I did meet her briefly as we sat together at the book signing session.

Of the talks I saw, only Craig Simpson shared my lack of a PowerPoint demonstration. Although I can see the benefit of PowerPoint - Celia made the very good point that it provided a focus both for your talk and for the listener - I have always resisted its lure (for similar reasons to those mentioned above). But I think its time to drag myself into the 21st Century.

That said - I'm not sure authors were getting the most out of it. It is obviously useful for an illustrator to be able to show their work, but I think it has the potential to be more than simply a slide show. I think I would be more tempted to use it to provide a kind of ongoing illustration to my words. I would want to explore the possibilities of animation and sound. A well placed flicker of activity or high pitched scream might be fun. But only if it works of course.

I had hoped to Chris Riddell at the Observer, but after hours of talking and listening to librarians and writers - albeit very friendly ones - I needed some non-speaking time and so I wandered into town to potter around bookshops and remind myself again how I can't really justify buying anything in Paul Smith in the current economic climate.

Catching up with Chris

It is a particularly beautiful autumn here in Cambridge. We deserve it too, after the stinking summer we had.

I spoke to my old friend Chris Riddell today. The last time I spoke to him he was just getting back from the Us where he's been on tour with Paul Stewart, and I was about to set off to Brazil. Gosh - what jet setters we've become.

We had our usual catch up. Chris was asking what I was up to and how things were going - to which I answered that I was tweaking Tales of Terror from the Tunnel's Mouth and writing Ghosts. We had a brief chat about Payne's Grey going fortnightly (booo!) and strips in general. I have been telling Chris - truthfully - that I have been looking at new strip ideas for about two years now. Somehow I never take them to a finished state.

Chris - as usual - seemed to be up to half a dozen things at once. He has his very successful partnership with Paul to maintain, bringing their Edge Chronicles cycle to a close (and working on whatever is to follow), as well as getting on with the Barnaby Grimes books.

But of course Chris has a very successful solo career as both writer and illustrator with his Ottaline books and his award-winning illustrated books with Walker. And that's not to mention his weekly cartoons on The Observer. I often wonder whether there is more than one of him.

Anyway - I might pop in and see him (and Dave Simonds) at the Observer tomorrow

Miles to go before he sleeps

Joad Raymond - or should I say the Welsh Johnny Depp (see earlier posting) - popped round this evening to collect his son - who is a good friend of my son. We had the briefest of chats before they had to go. As they were preparing to cycle away into the darkness his son asked if I had read Joad's blog and I had to confess I hadn't. I had tried and failed to find it by Googling but I now have the address and have added it to the list on the left. It is called 'miles to go before I sleep' - as in the lovely Frost poem:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

It is about running and about writing about running and probably many other things besides, as blogs inevitably are.

Speaking of blogs, I should also make a point of saying that Peter Kirkham has also started one. Peter has been sending me random emails for months and I never know what the hell I'm going to find when I open them up. His blog is likewise a kind of scrapbook of anything and everything Peter finds interesting. It's like having a good old root about inside his head.

And I mean that in a good way.

You are talking such rubbish

I was interviewed By John-Paul Holden of The Big Issue this morning by phone. I am never keen on being interviewed. It is such an unnatural process. In a conversation, what you say is always being modified and adjusted in relation to what the other person says. It is so odd having someone simply ask you a series of questions and certainly strange to never hear the words, 'You are talking such rubbish.' Or maybe that's just me.

A couple of boxes of books arrived from Doodled Books today. I haven' opened them yet, but they are copies of Tales of Terror from the Black Ship. I will try and remember to scan a few of them in before I send the doodled copies back to Claire.

I also received an email from James Fraser at Random House asking me if I'd be interested in illustrating the follow-up to Joe Rat by Mark Barrett - a book I illustrated at about this time last year under the effects of a hideous cold. And in principle I would. I have been on an extended sabbatical from the world of illustration, and I quite like the idea of getting back into it.

And I spoke to Ian Lamb at Bloomsbury about the Young Librarians Group event I'm doing on Friday.