Withersin’s Damned Interview with:

Richard Wright

I’m a writer of strange, dark fictions. For the last fifteen years I’ve defied my English heritage and lived in Scotland. I’m still there as I write this. However, by the time you read it, I’ll be living in India with my wife and daughter, and intend to do so for three or four years at the least.

List some of your works (stories, books, poems, songs, albums, movies, etc):

Hiram Grange and the Nymphs of Krakow should be available from Shroud Publishing soon, and is a novella concluding the first series of Hiram Grange stories. I have a story called ‘Mopleoli’ recently published in the Dark Wisdom anthology from Elder Signs Press, and my Doctor Who story ‘Lonely’ is reprinted in the Big Finish anthology Short Trips: Re: Collections. There are several more, but that’s what my website is for. Go and have a look at it.

Your website: http://www.richardwright.org

How can you be contacted?

If you gather with a small group of friends in front of a mirror and hum the theme tune to the original Knight Rider backwards, I appear in the glass.

In your own words, define Withersin.

A deep draught of sweet, gothic pleasure.

If you were a sideshow act, what would you be?

The Bearded Lady. Don’t ask.

What is your greatest non-literary influence?

My life, and all the people, places, and experiences that have formed it so far. What else is there?

Describe your most irrational fear:

Moths. Fluttery bags of evil and dust, that lay eggs in your eyes. Probably. I don’t like them.

How about your most guilty pleasure?

Writing longhand in coffee shops, even though I know people are sniggering and assuming I’m composing bad poetry.

Name the most disturbing nursery rhyme/fairy tale you can recall.

Godfather Death. Google is your friend. There are many variants, but all are exquisitely cruel. I prefer the one where the godson visits Death’s house, sees a succession of disturbing things, and flees when Death will not explain why he was wearing horns. Surreal and it gets inside your head as to what, exactly, makes the mortal run…

Do you eat meat?

Couldn’t live without it. Where I have the option though, I buy meat ethically. It satisfies me much more to know that I ended a happy, bountiful life to sate my appetites, rather than a miserable one. Hmmmm... Tasty happiness.

What were the skies like when you were young?

Full of zeppelins.

Name your favorite garden tool.

Edging irons can be whirled around in such a way as to make you feel like a martial artist from the ancient Far East.

Name your least favorite color, first job and worst job.

I would once have struggled to name a colour which I disliked. I now have a six year old daughter, and I loathe pink with a ferocity that sometimes embarrasses me.

My first job was while I was still at school, and I was a waiter in the world’s worst pub, serving inedible plates of blood and mush to horrified visitors.

Worst job? Poring over maps for months, trying to locate thousands of miles of underground pipes, because a gas company had forgotten where they put them.

Favorite:  Author, Movie, Music Group, Song, and Quote.

Favourite author, at the moment, is Neil Gaiman. This will change several times before anybody actually reads this interview.

I had to ask my wife what my favourite movie is, and she isn’t sure, but she really likes In Bruges and The Sound of Music.

Music group is currently Snow Patrol, who wrote my current favourite tune Run.

My favourite quote, out of the three I can remember without Googling to see if I’m making them up, is “Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.” From A Marx brother, very likely to be Groucho. Unless I made it up.

If you were a loaf of bread what kind would you be?

A French loaf. Make of this what you will.

Weirdest news you have read in your local newspaper:

Not local to me, but when I spent three weeks in London recently I was amused to see a billboard bearing a headline advertising the local rag. It said “WOMEN BEAT UP TRAM INSPECTORS”. Whether this was a bravely sweeping generalization, or a genuine epidemic sweeping the area, I still don’t know.

If you have a message to the people of Earth, tell us what it is:

Soon, you will be mine.

And finally, a question you can take anyway you like:  But Why?

Because, most of the time, I can’t stop myself.

Here’s a photo titled, “INEDIBLE NOT INTENDED FOR HUMAN FOOD” 

You have 112 words.  Go.

This just makes me wonder how many highway patrolmen think a taste test is the most effective way to identify whether a vehicle is carrying contraband. A rapidly decreasing number, I suspect.