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Interview with mike philbin - 01.07.09
When did you first discover the art of writing horror novels and short stories?
When I was writing under the pseudonym Hertzan Chimera many readers thought I was American, but I am an Englishman currently based in Oxford, UK. I started out as a figurative artist with a few one-man exhibitions of my paintings. My first published short story appeared in David Kopaska Merkel's “Dreams & Nightmares” magazine in 1986 (still running today, I believe). My first novel-length work was published in 1989 by Creation Press of London. I actually started writing so I could get my paintings on the cover of books. That first novel Red Hedz had one of my paintings on the cover and this painting featured heavily throughout the book. I always wanted to be Salvador Dali, not Stephen King, and ironically my work now is more surreal than most horror out there so I've achieved what I set out to by an alternative creative outlet.
What's the hardest thing about being a writer and what fascinates you the most about it?
Writing's great but you have to really enjoy what you're writing because the reader will know if you're 'typing for money' or whether you really wanna say something personal and you've got to know what you want from it otherwise you're gonna be bullied by a publisher, an agent, a marketing exec or the genre itself. There are so many ways writers fall into the many dull-grey-genre product pitfalls and many reasons why writers aren't writing the books they should be writing. Even horror extremo Clive Barker eventually started writing the sprawling religious fantasy books he'd always wanted to write even back in his Books Of Blood days. As far me, I also really love collaborative writing and that's why I wrote the HIM+CHIM+HER collection with fifteen other writers in various kama-sutric combinations.
C. What are your latest novel's Planet of the Owls and BukkakeWorld about?
They're about the New World Order that's ravaging this planet and how we're all losing our individuality and our creative liberties to the major mass-media-compliant banking corporations. This brace of novels are unique in themselves but (as you'll see from the unity of cover design) there's a hinted-at connectivity. They're both about eating the propaganda the government feeds you and shutting your mouth. They're also about refusing to lie on your back and soil yourself. They're fictional stories embedded in the real horror of life in the global twenty-first century and where we're headed as a race under the Eugenics shadow. Specifically, Planet of the Owls tells of the destruction of the Earth by the angels (giant birds) who eat everything and everyone and the world is at their mercy. Bukkakeworld is about what corporations do to humans, i.e. grind them to a pulp, no quarter spared. I'd once again like to thank Paul Hughes at Silverthought Press for having faith in these extreme, disturbing novels. They're surrealist horror for those with a very strong stomach only.
D. You publish the Chimera world anthology (now in its fifth year) each containing 23 stories from across the globe, so what made you decide to collect these different stories and publish them?
I couldn't find decent collections to read. I thought of starting something that was a little bit more extreme, a little bit more nightmarish, a little bit more offensive than the supposed horror collections I could find in the shops.
hey didn't you decide to put some of your own stories in the Chimera world books, or you just wanted to be an editor?
I'm a very hands-on editor. I set the detailed guidelines and theme. I work hard to whittle down the hundred+ submissions each year into the final twenty-three stories per issue. That's enough of a contribution from me. Besides, as I see it, if an editor inserts one of his own stories he's stealing the place of a potentially brilliant new or established writer. That's not fair, right?
When did you first enter the video games industry as a 3-D model creator?
When I got bored chasing grant money around to arrange the painting exhibitions. It was the year 1996, I think. I'd never really done any 3D before but I scammed some time on a local college's 3D Studio machines and self-learned enough to produce a demo reel which got me into what eventually became Sony Cambridge. I created landscapes, some characters and did some animations for Medieval. I really like to get involved in the why of what I'm contributing to any product: why it fits, why something else might not. If I can get my fingers in the Why Pie, I'm a happier character artist.
What are some of the inspirations for the cult hit Playstation games MEDIEVIL 1-2?
The inspiration for Medieval came from the producer Chris Sorrell, a very talented guy who has an expansive vision of what 3D entertainment should be. He also knows how to get to the nugget of game play and expand that aspect to a final marketable product. The major influence was a game from the mid-eighties called Ghouls and Goblins. Tim Burton's film Nightmare Before Christmas heavily influenced the art direction. All good gruesome fun.
What is the book "Horror Quarterly" about and what was the main basis of this project?
I had a web master on board back then and I decided to start a horror webzine called Horror Quarterly. It was (as you'd imagine) unique and extreme and subversive – it had some truly great content. It was a mix of stories, feature articles and dark rock music (yes) and there was a 3-part piece on Japanese horror from an English writer who'd lived in Japan for his literature degree. And then it all got too much work every three months. My web guy got fed up with my demands. I didn't have the storage for all the files. I just gathered the first three issues together, used the webzines three issues' index images on the cover and that's what became the Horror Quarterly book.
You are also an accomplished painter in extreme type other-worldy horror painting, how did you first enter this field?
I was going to be a scientist. I'd trained all my life in maths, physics and chemistry and was smoothly on my way to some science degree and research until I went to Art College and got bitten bad by the freedom of thought and action. That was a really wild time and one that is worth reminiscing about from time to time. I was painting these wild visions in life-size oil-on-hardboard long before I was writing books. But as the saying goes, “If a picture paints a thousand words...” then I get about 50 paintings' worth of joy from every published novel.
What aspect of the video games Ghost Master, Gun, and the 007 game From Russia with love did you handle?
Ghost Master was real mischievous fun, I got to invent how all these monsters would scare these kids and students and old folks from their homes – what could be better? I love working on fun projects, or what's the point of working? Gun and 007 were more a technical animator exercise converting data from one format to another and cleaning up motion capture data, looping anims and creating in-game cut-scenes.
Any future projects you working on at the moment you want to mention?
You'll find out in 2009.
What are your top 2 favorite horror movies?
John Carpenter's THE THING and Takashi Miike's AUDITION. I love body horror and I love sexy Japanese chicks. So kill me.
Zombie's or Vampire's?
Is this a trick question? Because I'm about to go postal. P. O. S. T. A. L. For me, Zombies and Vampires are so-over-used-they're-in-tatters genre tropes to be incinerated in the furnace of real, creative, horror possibility. I'm no real fan of either trope but realizing where I am, I'll offer these titbits to the readers of Horror News Net. The best vampire moment is the film THE HUNGER because I respect Whitley Strieber as a horror writer and I love that scene with Catherine Deneuve and Susan Sarandon. The best Zombie moment has to be in Lucio Fulci's ZOMBIE, we all know what I'm gonna say and it's not the shark fighting (which was just brilliant) but the eye-gouging of that woman using a window frame. Just damn nasty. Just what horror should be. Not entertainment, but an affront to our sensibilities.
Who are some of your inspirations to do what you love, be it writing,painting, or being a games designer?
I'm a big fan of what Giger did with biomorphic composition, bringing proper adult material into his blended-animal mix of monochrome alienation. I love the drunk-gay paintings of Francis Bacon. I love the films of David Cronenberg. I love Science still. I love all sorts of music, contemporary and archaic. I'm a big fan of Chris Cunningham, an amazing independent music video director. All these influences make it into my novels and stories.
Care to plug a web site of yours where industry peeps can contact you at?
Well, my own website is Mike Philbin Online I have a blog that I update daily about my genreclectic interests called Church of Atheism
Chimericana Books is where I publish Chimeraworld and other titles and my current novel publisher is Silverthought Press
Thanks for sharing this bloody time with me Mike Philbin.
My pleasure, Chris.
DR.GOREHOUND
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