A Horror World interview with Christopher Fulbright
By Steven E. Wedel

If the name Christopher Fulbright doesn’t ring a bell for you, you just haven’t been paying enough attention to the bubbles in the small press horror cauldron. Over the past several years Chris has published some well-received books and short fiction that some say have him poised to take the next big step forward.

Recently, horror icon Brian Keene said, “Christopher Fulbright’s fiction is always fresh, original, and wholly entertaining. If you want an author who can actually deliver terror, look no further. Fulbright’s future is bright indeed.” Who’s gonna argue with Keene?

OK, so maybe you’re convinced you should check out this Fulbright guy. But you want to know a little more about him. Hey, that’s what we’re here for at Horror World.

Horror World: Who the hell is Chris Fulbright? What do you do for a living and what makes you write?

Chris Fulbright: Heh, I’m sure a lot of people reading this interview are wondering the same thing -- who the hell am I? I’m tall, dark, and handsome. A love maker and woman taker. Envy of the small press horror world -- not because of my writing, but because of my lovely wife, no doubt. Also, I’m modest.

I am a writer by trade -- I started out almost 20 years ago as a reporter for a small weekly newspaper, and I’ve been a technical writer for almost 10 years now. I do some freelance stuff from time to time, too, articles and some ghostwriting. As far as what makes me write fiction … well, I don’t know. I ask myself that question all the time.

HW: When did you first take up writing? When was your first publication?

CF: I’ve been scribbling tales for as long as I’ve been able to put pen to paper. We moved around a lot when I was a kid. My dad was a project manager for a construction company, so as soon as a project was done, we’d up and move. I didn’t make many friends. Most of the time, we lived in a trailer on the job sites, so it wasn’t like I had a neighborhood to go ride a bike in and get in fights with other kids and kiss girls and stuff. Instead of going outside to play, I’d create my own worlds on paper -- it started out as just another way to play, I guess, and it’s still kind of like that. In retrospect, knowing what I know now, being all “growed-up” it was, and continues to be, the greatest escape from real life.

I started getting serious about it in high school back in the mid-‘80s. I wrote a bunch of super gory, extra violent horror stories with the sole intent of grossing people out. It was a lot of fun. I did that for a while, until one day, I wrote this sorta thoughtful ghost story with nary a drop of blood. My creative writing teacher freaked out and gushed about it, and published it in the high school literary magazine. So, officially, that was the first. My first real genre publication, though, was in a great little magazine called Haunts back in 1993.

HW: You don’t confine your writing to the horror genre. I know you’re a big fan of Robert E. Howard and you write some fantasy. Do you find horrific and fantastic elements crossing over in your fiction? Monsters in fantasy and such?

CF: I am a huge fan of Howard. I’ve been fortunate to visit his home in Cross Plains several times and go through the museum and library and all that. He’s such an inspiration, and I only wish he’d been able to stick it out and give us more great stuff. But, yeah, while I don’t write a whole lot of fantasy, per se, I do find that fantasy and horror crossover in my fiction. I write stories with monsters and bogeys and things that lurk beneath deceptively beautiful surfaces. Supernatural horror and dark fantasy are very closely related in my eyes.

HW: Besides Howard, who has influenced your writing?

CF: Damn … you want a list? I don’t think anybody who’s our age and writes horror can get away with saying they weren’t influenced by Stephen King. Robert McCammon is one of my absolute favorites. The rest are pretty diverse genre-wise: William Goldman, Hemingway, Raymond Chandler, Harlan Ellison, Sheckley, Matheson, Hunter S. Thompson, Bradbury, Donald Westlake. I’m a huge fan of the old pulps too, writers like Clark Ashton Smith, Hugh Cave, Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, and Louis L’Amour. All great stuff.

HW: You have a brand new book out, a short story collection called WHEN IT RAINS AND OTHER WRECKAGE from Doorways Publications. Tell us about that.

CF: Well, it’s a collection of horror stories, which I consider the best of what I’d had published from ’93 up through 2006. I’m really confident in the substance of this collection, more than anything I’ve had published in book form before (which admittedly isn’t a lot). Folks can read the teaser and blurbs at Shocklines (it’s available at Amazon.com, too, but copies from Shocklines will be signed), so I won’t bother going into a description of all the tales. I do plan to do a run down of the genesis of some of the stories on my blog sometime soon, since I didn’t really go into it in the book at all. But yeah, they’re all horror stories, some of them graphic, some of them quiet, some of them with a toe over the dark fantasy line, and they’re all supernatural or monster horror. My favorite kind.

HW: There are illustrations in this collection. Did you have any input on those?

CF: Matthew Kukosky did the illustrations for the book and he did a fucking awesome job. He really blew me away. I had a little bit of input on a couple of them, on the cover for instance, but mostly he just read the stories and sent me the illustrations when they were done. I couldn’t be happier with how they came out. There’re eighteen stories in the collection, and ten of them are illustrated, including the cover story, “When It Rains.”

HW: You’ve seen some good and some very bad business practices in the small press. Without naming names – unless you want to – what are some of your best and worst experiences with small press publishers?

CF: I’ve had a lot of good experiences with magazine publishers, and my experiences with book publishers have been about 50/50. Short Scary Tales Publications, run by Paul Fry out of the UK, did my first novella in 2002, and he was great to work with. Same with Walt Hicks from Hellbound Books. Carnifex has been pretty good to work with, too, on THEN COMES THE CHILD. Brian Yount with Doorways is just getting started, and his heart’s in the right place.

The main thing I hate is when people can’t admit they made a mistake and got in over their heads. Instead of owning up to it, they disappear or just go dreadfully silent and you never hear another fucking word from them. That’s enough to piss anybody off, especially if you had your hopes pinned on a deal -- or worse, were waiting for a check that never came.

HW: Keene seems to think you’re ready to move on to bigger publishers. How do you feel about your writing? Do you think you’re ready? Where would you like to see yourself in five years?

CF: Does he think that? That’s very kind of him. Of course, I’d love an opportunity to work with a well-established small press, someone like CD or Delirium. I feel like I’m ready. There’s always more to learn -- I’m not the literary equivalent of a Jedi master by any means -- but I feel like my writing is strong enough to compete with what’s out there now. Of course I think that, otherwise I wouldn’t keep doing it.

In five years, I see myself with fiction in the mass marketplace. In the meantime, I just keep chipping away at the stone.

HW: You got married a while back. You and wife Angeline Hawkes have put out one book together so far. What’s it like collaborating with your spouse on a story?

CF: It’s awesome. Angeline is a fantastic writer, and a very hard worker, which motivates me quite a bit. We write very fast together. It’s sinfully easy to finish the first draft of a novella length work in a week or two. Maybe the coolest part about it is that we push each other to be better. It’s not a competition at all, but more like dueling guitarists, say KK Downing and Glenn Tipton, you know … we each do our very best work every time, so far it’s always come together well.

HW: Will we be seeing more Fulbright & Hawkes stories in the near future?

CF: Absolutely. We have a short story called “The Mud, the Blood, and the Bones” coming out in Twilight Tales Book of Dead Things in the next couple months. We have three novels outlined -- a horror novel, an adventure novel, and a fantasy novel. I just started writing the horror novel two weeks ago, and the fantasy novel is about 25% there. We’ve got several other short stories out floating around, and have negotiated a deal for a new horror novella recently, but we have to wait a bit longer before we can release any details on that one. But it’s gonna be cool. Really cool.

HW: You spend your daytime hours writing technical material. Do you find this drains your creativity, or does it make you fired up to do something more creative?

CF: If I’m ready to write fiction, it’s gonna come regardless whether I’ve spent all day writing technical documentation. When the day job gets to be a grind, it’s serious motivation to get home and get back to work on the fun stuff.

HW: You also worked as a journalist. What are some of the benefits and drawbacks of having a day job that requires you to write?

CF: Well, I’ll say that one benefit of writing for the newspapers -- my first newspaper job especially -- was working with a real editor, and learning how to make every word count. The drawbacks are few. I’m fortunate to have been able to do what I set out to do: make a living as a writer.

HW: Do you think living in Texas has helped or hindered your fiction writing career? Do writers on the coasts have an advantage over their landlocked counterparts?

CF: I don’t think it’s made much of a difference. I went to high school in Colorado, and one night at the bar in my hometown (several years ago before I moved to Texas) I ran into this gal I went to school with. She was one of these glamour girl Barbie doll types, and she’d set out to be a model or an actress or some shit, and so she’d taken off for L.A. or some soul-sucking place like that. She was back visiting her family, so we were drinking that night and she asked me, “If you want to be a writer, why don’t you move to New York?” I just shrugged and said that living in New York wasn’t going to make me a better writer. Maybe the proximity to publishers gives you something of an advantage, an opportunity to meet folks face-to-face, but all in all, I love living in Texas, I’ve got a great life, wife, and job, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world.

HW: Anything I should have asked and didn’t?

CF: I’ve probably said far too much already.

HW: Thanks for your time, Chris. For those wanting more information, be sure to visit Chris online at www.christopherfulbright.com.

.