This interview with Chris F.
Needham was first published in January 2006. To find out even more about the
author, you must visit our Chris F. Needham
page.
What
was it that first got you into writing and when did you start writing?
Chris
F. Needham: I used to read a lot of fantasy as a
child, particularly Conan the Barbarian books. Anything Conan was like gold to
me. Secondly - and this pains me to say this - it was “The Firm” by John Grisham.
For whatever reason, that book actually got me excited about writing. That's
when I first thought, "Hell, I can do this." Of course I was truly
terrible when I first got started - my initial effort was 280 thousand words
strung together in very ineffective and overwrought ways - and that was, oh,
about twelve years ago. I started “An
Inverted Sort of Prayer” in the spring of '98.
Where were you born and raised?
Chris F. Needham:
I was
born in Surrey, British Columbia - that's in Canada, eh - and raised in the
neighboring municipality of North Delta, a bedroom community for the city of
Vancouver. Utter suburbs in all directions. Real soul killing stuff, let me tell
ya.
Which writers have influenced
you the most?
Chris F. Needham:
That'd be, in no particular
order, Ernest Hemingway, John Steinbeck, JM Coetzee, the Fitgeralds (both F.
Scott and Penelope), Jack Kerouac, Alice Munro, Albert Camus and Richard
Hughes. Oh, and Bill Burroughs too. And Salinger. And Maclean! Yes, can't
forget ol' Norman Maclean. Well that's quite a list, isn't it. Apparently I've
been influenced by a lot of writers.
Where
do you stand on the nature v. nurture debate? Were you born a writer, or were
there factors in your environment that enabled you to become a writer?
Chris
F. Needham: It depends on what your expectations are.
In retrospect, some writers are quite obviously born that way, especially the
great ones, while others come to it through some other avenue. There is such a
wide spectrum of what is considered good writing these days, that virtually
anyone can take a crack at it though. Personally (and oh so vaguely), I would
say I was born with potential. My brother and I played a great deal of Dungeons
and Dragons as kids, though, and that probably helped develop my imagination.
There
are a lot of courses teaching creative writing nowadays, but do you think that
good writing can be taught?
Chris
F. Needham: I think good writing can be taught, yes,
but that great writing must be born. That being said, I've had no formal
training as a writer, so I guess I'm holding out for the second option. Good
luck, no?
Have
you entered writing competitions? If so, have you won any prizes?
Chris
F. Needham: I entered a manuscript in the Faulkner
competition some years ago, and they quite rightly tossed it in the trash.
Don't know if this counts, but I once won a jar of jelly beans at a family
reunion by guessing the approximate number. The jar was a clear glass cylinder,
so I counted the number on the bottom and multiplied that by the number up the
side. I was about eight years old, if I remember correctly. Obviously, I quite
ought to have been a mathematician.
What kind of things do you
write?
Chris F. Needham:
Only
novels, so far. Literary fiction novels, that is, to be snobby about it. I've
written six, of which “An Inverted Sort of Prayer” is number four. The first
three are very, very bad and, if we're at all lucky, shall never see the light
of day. In fact, one or two of them might not even exist anymore. Though I have
this sneaking suspicion my mother may have saved them somehow.
What, for you, is the best
piece of prose that you have ever written?
Chris F. Needham:
There is
a section of this book, where the protagonist is living on a barge in Amsterdam
doing far too much drugs amongst far too many strangers, where I think I may
have tapped into something larger than myself somehow.
What are you working on now?
Chris F. Needham:
I'm
working on book number seven, tentatively entitled "Fonduing with the
Feldmans." I have as yet no idea what it's about. Also, I'm about to start
the final draft of my next published novel (due out in 2007), “Falling from
Heights”. It's about a woman in a government-sponsored drug experiment in 1972,
and it's pretty much all true. That's about all I can say about that right now.
What is your writing day like?
Chris F. Needham:
Up
early - I'm talking way before noon here - kick the wife out of the house, make
some breakfast, stare out the window, check the sports highlights, check my
emails, water my plants (at least I think that's what the kids are calling it
these days), stare out the window some more, then press some keys on a keyboard
in the faint and desperate hope of coming up with something original and
meaningful. Then the wife comes home and we go out for a walk. And that's about
all. Oh yeah, and then I watch hockey somewhere.
Where would you like to be in
10 years time?
Chris F. Needham:
Sarcastic
answer: doing interviews. Genuine answer: coming up with something original,
something true, something that matters and that has never before been triggered
by the hand of man.
What’s
the best piece of feedback that you’ve had from your audience?
Chris
F. Needham: It's a tie. Either when my wife looked at
my photograph on the back of the book and said, "You're hot!" or when
a friend of mine recognized a mutual acquaintance in my book and said,
"Dude, he's gonna kill you."
Do you
write for a particular audience, or is your first priority to satisfy your own
creativity?
Chris
F. Needham: I think it was Seymour Glass who said to
his brother Buddy in a letter, something to the effect of, "You were a
reader before you ever were a writer. So just figure out what it is you would
like to read, and then write that." Or something like that.
How do you describe your
writing to new readers?
Chris F. Needham:
I try
not to. All of my books have been so different from one another that I don't
want to influence a reader in any particular way. When they ask what kind of
stuff I write, I say, "Good stuff."
Do you have a homepage? If so,
what’s the URL?
Chris F. Needham:
No, but
the publisher does, and you can see my smiling mug there. It's www.nonpublishing.com
