Niteblade

On this Halloween I’m happy to present you with an interview with Jonathan Pinnock. I hope you find Jonathan as engaging as I did.

When did you first recognize yourself as a writer?

I’m still working on it. But I think the point at which I began to think I might be able to recognize myself as a writer was when I heard I’d been shortlisted for an open competition (the 2007 University of Hertfordshire Creative Writing Awards).

What draws you to speculative fiction?

I think it’s the freedom to go anywhere you want, so that you can take an interesting idea to its logical conclusion and then go a bit beyond that.

Is there a piece of writing advice you’ve never followed?

Loads. Particularly stuff to do with being disciplined and writing so many words every day, that kind of thing. I’m pretty chaotic about when I write and I tend to need a good deadline to focus my mind.

In the December 2008 issue of Niteblade, Rhonda chose to publish your story, “An Unsuitable Replacement“.  Is there a story behind how it came about?

As it happens, there is. I originally wrote it during a charity write-a-thon I took part in back in late 2007. The way this worked was that a list of prompts were published every hour, on the hour, and you had an hour in which to write something based on a selection of those prompts.

I can therefore tell you quite precisely that “An Unsuitable Replacement” was written between the hours of 8PM and 9PM GMT on Thursday November 15^th, 2007, using the prompts “I took my looks for granted” and “My body is wearing out”.

Apart from changing the title (it was originally called “A Matter of Life and Death”, I don’t think I did a lot of further editing before submitting it to Niteblade.

What have you been working on lately?

My first novel “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens” was published by Proxima Books, an imprint of Salt Publishing, on September 1^st, so I’ve been spending a fair amount of time lately promoting that. I’ve also been writing a few short stories and working on a Big New Project that I’m going to keep under my hat until I’m sure it’s going to fly.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with Niteblade’s readers?

Well, here’s the website for “Mrs Darcy versus the Aliens”: www.mrsdarcyvsthealiens.com, and here’s a spoof Wikipedia I’ve put together to give a bit of unreliable background information: www.mrsdarcyvsthealiens.com/wiki. Here’s my writing website: www.jonathanpinnock.com, and you can follow me on Twitter as @jonpinnock. You can also follow Mrs Darcy on Twitter as @RealMrsDarcy.