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<\/h3>\nChris Durston is a self-described oddball from the South West of England who always thought he ought to be writing and has only recently decided to do anything about it. He rarely knows what’s going on, with anything, ever, but has come to terms with that. As well as writing weird fiction – and now, as part of Skullgate Media, producing anthologies – he’s contributed to several gaming websites and hosts Philosophiraga, a podcast about philosophy and video games. Find out more at chrisdurston.com<\/a> or on Twitter\u00a0@overthinkery1.<\/a><\/p>\n <\/p>\n\n1. Have you always wanted to write?<\/h3>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\nFor as long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I wrote pages and pages of stuff by hand as a kid, then on a computer\u00a0that basically just had a word processor and Solitaire; I was probably way more productive when I was ten than I am now! I just knew I wanted to tell stories. I never really considered doing anything else, to be honest.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nSomehow, the love of just writing<\/i>\u00a0faded away a little bit as I got older. I think part of it was thinking that the stuff I’d spent so long writing up to that point just wasn’t really very good, part of it was having<\/i>\u00a0to write for studies, part of it might just have been general ennui or whatever. It took a while for me to start writing again just for the enjoyment of it; I spent a couple of years writing pieces on video games, which I told myself was all good practice for when I finally came back to fiction (and it was, to be fair) but which was probably mostly me putting off coming back to fiction. Then, towards the end of 2019, I decided I just had to do it. So I did!<\/div>\n\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\n2. Tell us about your writing\/published books<\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\u00a0<\/i><\/div>\nMy one published novel so far is Each Little Universe<\/i>, which I started writing in uni in 2014, finished drafting in 2015\/16 through NaNoWriMo and the subsequent months, and then took four years to fully revisit and finally publish. It’s not a masterpiece of thrilling events; I know it has some problems, especially with the pacing, but I adore the characters and the themes and I’m really proud of it.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nThe main thrust of the story is two inventors meeting a girl from the stars and having to teach her how to be human while avoiding the forces that are kind of ticked off that she’s run away, but most of the book is really just about people forging connections with each other and thinking about these big human questions. There’s a lot of love, but it’s not a love story – I think true love can be just as valid between friends as in a romantic context. It asks questions like ‘what even is consciousness?’ and then uses pop culture things like gaming and wrestling to examine those questions while basically giving me an excuse to have these characters spend time together.<\/div>\n<\/div>\nAfter I published ELU<\/i>, things kind of took off. I’ve now got pieces in a couple of upcoming anthologies, a few creative collaborations on the go, and a whole lot of writerly friends I’ve come across via social media. One of the coolest things ever to happen to me has been spotting a whimsical tweet asking whether anyone would like to be in a shared-world collaborative project and saying ‘yes, I would, please’; that’s spiralled totally beyond my imaginings into the Tales from the Year Between <\/i>anthology series, which is perhaps the strangest and most brilliant creative project I’ve ever come across. We’ve published one volume so far, and the second is well underway! (See yearbetween.com<\/a>, skullgatemedia.com<\/a>, or\u00a0@SkullgateMedia on Twitter for more info.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\u00a0