Interview with Tim Lebbon and Chris Golden

GOLDEN: You're from Wales (in case you'd forgotten—on your third Budweiser as you are), which I'm told is pretty country. You've got a lovely family, a talent with words, and an impish grin. Women love you (well, AMERICAN women—they like the accent and rubbing your stubbly bald head like it's Aladdin's lamp — but I won't tell your wife) and men at the very least don't tend to want to break your legs. Why on earth would a regular, decent-seeming guy want to do this sort of thing for a living? In other words, how did you become so odd?

LEBBON: Shut about the Budweiser, dammit! I have a reputation to uphold here! And as for the American ladies, none of them have ever seen my genie. Now, the oddness to which you allude—am I odd? I don't know. Lots of the people I mix with in my part-time day job spend their lives supporting teams of blokes who kick a leather ball around a big field, drinking bad gassy lager like Budweiser, watching soap operas and believing all the characters are real, arguing about who's got the fastest car, and the only books they're likely to read are autobiographies by nineteen-year-old 'celebrities' who earned their fame by stripping naked in a reality TV show. And you call me odd? Now, if I didn't manage to write and get all these ideas down on paper .. then I believe I'd rapidly turn to oddness. Oh yes.

LEBBON: Before you finish that pint, I'd like to ask what started you along this dark and exciting path? You've written many novels, ranging from vampire books to fantasy to tales bordering on science fiction. Is there a book or film that you recall from your early years that set you on this road? Or have you always been worryingly, yet endearingly twisted?

GOLDEN: (drunken slurring edited out for the sake of coherence): As you imply, what defines normal? It's like that bit in Stephen King's STAND BY ME when Gordy asks if Chris thinks he's weird, and Chris says "yeah, but who'd want to be normal?" I was always the odd kid, but mostly in my head. Not that others didn't think me strange, but I didn't look the part. Never shaved my head or got tattooed or went goth or punk or anything of the sort. I suspect that's because I never *felt* different. I just didn't understand why everyone else didn't also think all of this cool shit was . . . cool. I dragged my friends into the bookstore every single time we went out. My mother held a séance at one of my birthday parties. I tried reading my friends scary stuff out loud by candlelight at another—can you even begin to imagine how embarrassing? Yes, they teased me, but not nearly as much as you can imagine. For the most part, they understood how much I loved all the weird stuff. At the same time, I think I might have been prevented from being even more odd by the fact that none of my friends were interested. Always wanted to play Dungeons & Dragons as a kid, but NEVER got the chance, because I didn't know a single other person who would play. As for a single book or film that set me on the path, if anything, it would be the tv series KOLCHAK: THE NIGHT STALKER, which ran only twenty episodes in the U.S. That show had a huge influence on me. Then there was Marvel Comics' TOMB OF DRACULA and the local monster/horror movie showcase, CREATURE FEATURE (which on Saturdays was CREATURE DOUBLE FEATURE). CREATURE FEATURE gave me everything from Universal and Hammer and Toho monster movies to classic fifties science fiction, to DAY OF THE TRIFFIDS, really anything you can think of. In books, a bit later than KOLCHAK and TOMB OF DRACULA, it was the works of Stephen King and the horror short story anthologies edited by Charles L. Grant. Those two guys laid the groundwork for me, for everything that would come after.

GOLDEN: I'll turn the tables on you, now, Tim. What were your early influences, and how did your friends and family react to your interests while you were growing up?

LEBBON: I can think of one TV episode that scared me utterly witless, and made me realise not only that I enjoyed being scared, but that I'd like to create stories like that as well. My reaction to this programme was so strong that the power of stories was revealed to me there and then. I didn't just watch, I experienced. The programme was Nigel Kneale's BEASTS, and the episode was called (I believe), 'Baby'. I must have watched this in the late Seventies, and until recently I had no idea what it was called or where it came from. And then, whilst staying at a friend's house, I mentioned how much this show had affected me ... and minutes later he produced it on video! I was nervous; I thought I'd watch it and be disappointed. But later that evening he and I dimmed the lights, and I'm delighted to admit that it scared the living crap out of me once again, a quarter of a century after first watching it. Other TV shows contributed: Doctor Who, Children of the Stones, Tales of the Unexpected, many more. As for books, I started off reading mystery books, moved on to Willard Price's Adventure series, then when I was nine years old I read THE RATS by James Herbert. That warped my impressionable young mind, make no mistake, and here I am today! My family have always been great about what I do, my friends also. In fact one of my best friends from the age of eleven onward is a screenwriter and novelist, and he and I share many of the same macabre interests.

LEBBON: You're incredibly prolific, yet to me THE VEIL seems like a huge undertaking. A trilogy of novels, research-heavy, ambitious, original, beautifully crafted. How do you view THE VEIL? Is it your most important work to date?

GOLDEN: Ah, hell, amigo, you know there's no way I can KNOW that. Is it a huge undertaking? Absolutely. And I'm thrilled with the characters and the worlds in this thing—it FEELS right to me, very much a product of my heart. But really, it's still about the journey. I shoulder my backpack and set off on the road, living the classic Indiana Jones approach of making it up as I go along, and the real difference between THE VEIL and other things I've written is that with this, I know that I'm going to be away from home for longer than ever before, that the journey is going to take me places I never expected or imagined. I can't say if the work will be important to anyone else, but it's damned important to me. I've rarely given myself so completely over to the ebb and flow of fiction and the creative process . . . it's extraordinarily liberating, actually. And I'm drunk now, aren't I?