Today
I’m thrilled to welcome James Hutchings to the blog.
James lives in Melbourne, Australia. He fights crime as Poetic Justice, but his
day job is acting. You might know him by his stage-name 'Brad Pitt.' He
specializes in short fantasy fiction. His work has appeared in Daily Science
Fiction, fiction365 and Enchanted Conversation among other markets.
His latest
collection: The New Death and others, sounds intriguing:
Death gets a roommate...
An electronic Pope faces a difficult
theological question...
A wicked vizier makes a terrible
bargain...
44 stories and 19 poems. There's a
thin line between genius and insanity, and James Hutchings has just crossed it
- but from which direction?
Q: What will
readers like about your book?
People have said that they like the humour. They've also said that
the city of Telelee, which appears in a few stories, is interesting. I also
think it stands apart from a lot of fantasy simply because it isn't based on
the common template of huge novels about epic quests.
Q: What
inspired you to write it?
Some ideas just pop into my
head, without me knowing where the idea comes from. Other ideas come from
experiences in my life. For example a while ago I found three injured birds in
the space of a few weeks. I took all of them to the local vet. As I was
carrying one of them, I thought that the woman at reception might wonder where
I was finding all these injured birds, and that was the inspiration for my
story Lost, Feral or Stray. I've written a lot about cats, based on having
been a cat owner.
Of course other fiction is a big inspiration. In some cases it's obvious. I've
done poems directly based on stories by HP Lovecraft and other writers for
example. In other cases it's more subtle: for example the city of Teleleli or
Telelee is partly based on Fritz Leiber's Lankhmar, partly on Terry Pratchett's
Ankh-Morpork, and partly on Port Blacksand in the Fighting Fantasy series.
Q. Do you
have any new works in the pipeline?
I'm working on a verse version of A Princess of Mars. This is a
science fiction adventure story, now in the public domain, written by Edgar
Rice Burroughs, who's more famous for Tarzan. Disney is also doing a movie of
it, called John Carter, but that's not why I chose it. I generally work on
several things at the same time, so I'm also in the middle of a few short
stories and poems.
I've been
encouraged to write a novel set in the fantasy city of Telelee, which is the
setting of a few of the stories in The New Death and others. I have a lot of
background for this world, because I blog every day
and most of it is setting detail. I also have a half-finished novel called
All-American Detectives, which is a combination of a detective story and a
story about superheroes, which I'll probably come back to in the future.
Q: Who are
your favorite authors?
I don't know if these are my only favourites, but they're the one
that probably influenced The New Death and others the most. JRR Tolkien and
Jack Vance for the elaborate dialogue. Robert E Howard for the general
atmosphere. Terry Pratchett for the humour. and Lord Dunsany for the use of
Fame, Time and so on as characters.
Q: Tell us
something about yourself that not many people know.
I have three nipples (the third one is a lot smaller, and looks like
a birthmark, but it isn't).
Lol!
Thanks, James for telling us about yourself, your writing and your extra little
friend there.
James' ebook
collection The New Death and others is now available from Amazon and
Smashwords.
