Chris Hill
ORP: What inspired you to begin writing or creating? Has that source of inspiration changed throughout your life?
Christopher Hill: My earliest memories are of my mum reading to me. She read me everything within reach – stories about rabbits in waistcoats, mad scientists, laundry lists, encyclopedias, even the newspaper. When she felt like her brain was about to dribble out her nose, she would pass me off to my dad who would read me more things – although I will never forgive him for trying to get me interested in WW2 planes (it’s not happening, Dad, tanks are clearly the superior machine).
Eventually, Mum recorded herself reading stories so I could listen to them in bed, when playing, taking a bath, or doing one of a hundred important childhood tasks. I grew up surrounded by stories, by words, by the shifting landscape of imagination, peopled with everyone from Jemima Puddle-duck to John Hammond, from Granny Weatherwax to Jaimie Lannister. I loved stories, I loved them so much that I would lay awake at night telling myself tales about Commissar Yarrick, Bulbasaur and Dracula.
So, it confused the hell out of my parents when my primary school informed them that I was in the lowest set for English, struggled with reading and couldn’t do any of the creative writing tasks set by the teacher. That was somewhat of a curve ball for them. It turns out that making kids read crap like Biff and Chip and their Magic-sodding-Key, and all the other books put out by that boredom exporter, the Oxford Reading Tree, tends to kill their enjoyment of the subject. I remember one of the reading volunteers write in my reading log, “Christopher sighs a lot” and that might just be the best tagline for my time at school. I’ve always wanted better books, better books for children specifically, so I started writing the sort of stories that a young me would have wanted to read. That's been my consistent goal — write a story that I would want to read.
ORP: What books have you read many times?
CH: I am unashamedly in love with the works of David Gemmell, and have read the Drenai Saga so many times I can sing along the whole way through. The style is very simple, to the point, and highly accessible. Reading it feels like coming home, stepping into a warm cabin, shaking snow off your boots and hanging up your battleaxe, ready for a big drink of Lentrian Red. I think I would have to give back my Englishman card if I didn’t mention Terry Pratchett. The first book of his I picked up was Hogfather. I didn’t get most of the jokes at first, but the characters hit me, and they left a mark. A lot of people think of Pratchett as just someone who takes the piss out of fantasy tropes, and this encourages them to laugh at things like “quests” when they encounter them in other books*. If you stripped away all the humor from Pratchett’s work, then you would be left with a deep exploration of people’s hearts and minds, understanding their little heartbreaks, their kitchen-sink loves, the joy they find in small comforts, and the restorative power of companionship. Pratchett once joked that he had been accused of “Doing Literature,” and I find him guilty as charged. If there’s one book I can pick up again and again, it’s Betrayer by Aaron Dembski-Bowden. It’s part of The Black Library’s ongoing series called the Horus Heresy, which has had mixed responses. Betrayer is a book about a bunch of mad bastards being mad bastards, and being really good at killing stuff. It’s full of space opera shenanigans, giant guns, robots, and dubious brain surgery. A good read that will leave you absolutely saying, “Fuck Erebus”.
*I couldn’t resist using a footnote here, in tribute to the great man. Pratchett was a voracious reader who basically ate novels, drank comic books, and crapped in Times New Roman. He understood stories on such a deep level that he saw all their moving parts; the tropes. This allowed him to riff on them, put them in different settings, and play with the concept. It’s the same thing Tolkien did; having the Ents attack Isengard is a riff on Shakespeare’s MacBeth – “This is how a wood really covers a hill, you son of a bitch!” So, the people who read Terry Pratchett uncritically, who think they are in on the joke with him, that “fantasy tropes are silly” are idiots.
ORP: What is the most valuable piece of advice you’ve been given about writing or creating? What advice would you give to another writer or artist?
CH: It would be very trite of me to say something like, “Follow your dreams, work hard, etc, etc” or “If Johnny Cash, Charles Dickens, Catherine the First or Biddy Mason can achieve their dreams, then so can you”, so I won’t. Stuff like that isn’t actually helpful, because you only know these people for their successes, not their failures, and it promotes an unhealthy view of what success is. When it comes to my own writing, the two pieces of advice that stick with me come from two of the most influential men in my life; Steven King, and my dad.
I tend to not like King’s books. I’m not scared, I’m mostly bored. He’s had a few I enjoy – Mr Mercedes, The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon — but his main contribution to my writing was his book On Writing. Get it. It’s good. The key to it is write every day. That’s it. Get a piece of paper, and write on it. Write until its full. That’s it, job done. Practice your craft daily, that’s the best advice anyone can give you, I think. My dad’s contribution came when I gave him a noir detective story I had written. He went over it, red pen in hand — he has an uncurable case of English Teacher, we’ve tried to get him help — before putting it down, taking a sip of his tea, and then saying, “Chris, there’s some real shit out there.” And that was it. Although trauma-inducing at the time, it’s something I’ve come to embrace. Let me explain; my dad taught A-level English for decades. He’s read nearly two books a day since he was twenty. He’s now seventy-five. He knows what he likes, and he’s good enough at enduring what he doesn’t that he can still finish a book he thinks is bad. So, he’s surely the best person to judge a story, right? Not really, because in the same way paper beats stone, paper loses to scissors. I’ve read the books my dad likes best, and some of them are rubbish as far as I’m concerned. Someone will hate your writing, that’s a guarantee. But someone will love it. Keep going until you find someone who loves your writing, and then write for that person. Writing for an audience should make you happy.
ORP: What do you hope readers (or your audience) will take away from your creative work?
CH: That I’m a cool guy and you should join my cult. I joke, obviously, but I’m comfortable enough in my own insecurities to tell you that, yes, my self-esteem is tied up in how you receive my work. I’d like to think all writers are a bit like that — overly caffeinated, emotionally vulnerable, and hoping you unconditionally love what they’ve produced.
