Mr Moustache

25 May 2007

"The moustache-to-no-moustache ratio in my stories is, at present, about one to four. It used to be much higher. I am slowly getting it out of my system. I think my fascination stems from the fact that I can't grow a very good real moustache."

There's a great interview between Vim Cortez and Chris Killen over at the Paris Bitter Hearts Pit.

Chris Killen: I would like to define the term “novel”: a novel can be anything at all. I don’t even think it has to be a book if you don’t want it to be. A novel could be an apple standing on a windowsill. I did a creative writing MA, and spent all my time asking the tutors and the visiting authors and agents and other members of the class what they thought a novel should be, and especially how long it should be. One tutor told me a novel was something 80,000 words +. At that point I was writing my first novel (‘The Bird Room’) and I knew it was only going to be 30,000 words at most (I recently re-drafted it and it is now 19,000), and so I spent a lot of time on this MA nodding and agreeing with everyone and secretly panicking. Now I don’t give a shit anymore. I wrote a novel the other day which was eight words long. I will reproduce it for you below, in full:

The Man in the Road

We were watching the man in the road.

I like the idea of getting ‘The Man in the Road’ hard-bound somewhere, with blurbs and an ISBN and title page, etc.

Vim Cortez: Amazing. I’ll write the blurb if you’ll let me. How about "Chris Killen delivers yet another gripping tale of out-of-order traffic lights and excited, voyeuristic gangs of blue-haired grannies stuck in a second floor retirement house lounge with a broken telly”? I can even think of a possible sequel: “And then Came the Lurching Lorry.”

Chris Killen: That sounds great. Thank you for the blurb. Maybe I could spin out a whole series of these. I think I could write about a thousand novels a year this way. I have already sent Penguin a copy of the manuscript. I know they don’t normally accept unsolicited manuscripts, but I figure this one is so small it might just slip under the door somehow. I am aiming for the top. I will keep you posted on its progress.

You can read Chris Killen's 'On Mugging' in this month's Dogmatika [no moustache and longer than 'The Man in the Road']. Chris is writing a novel, untitled 'supermarket nightmare', and is posting it chapter by chapter over at his blog.