Chris Lynch is a renowned comic book and Doctor Who spin-off writer. Welcome To Neverbury is his latest work, a collection of spooky and supernatural stories told by the inhabitants of a quaint English seaside town. What We Reading sat down with Chris to talk about everything from Neverbury, his previous works, the influence of parenthood on his writing to the threats posed by the rise of AI!
Thanks for speaking with us, Chris! First off, tell us a bit about yourself and what led you to the world of writing.
Writing has been a part of my life for as long as I can remember. I’ve always loved books and reading, which I think I inherited from my mum, and I always enjoyed creative writing in school. My dad is a great storyteller as well, so I’ve been fortunate to inherit something there as well. All in all, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t want to be a writer.
I’ve done lots of different types of writing over the years. Like most people, I started out with short stories, but then I moved on to writing comics and screenplays before settling down into writing novels. I was fortunate, through some of the connections I’d made during my comic book and indie film days, to be tapped to write some Doctor Who spin-off books and that’s when I really settled down into being “a novelist”.
(This has not stopped me from taking on stupid challenges like writing a murder mystery play for the Welsh national crime writers’ convention, however!)
Talk to us about your latest release, Welcome To Neverbury. It already seems to be making quite a splash!
Welcome to Neverbury is a set of linked stories that all happen in the same town; a quaint little seaside town somewhere on the coast of England with the sorts of problems that lots of quaint little seaside towns in England have… demons, serial killers, immortals, thieves, time travellers, ghosts, vampires, idle gods, haunted houses, witches, an extraordinarily strident village council, and monsters.
I’ve been absolutely astonished by the support Welcome to Neverbury has had online and I’m very grateful in particular to the reviewers who have taken the time to read the book and post such positive reviews about it.
You’re already an accomplished author across multiple genres. How does Welcome To Neverbury differ to what you’ve done previously, and what challenges did you run into writing it?
Welcome to Neverbury is not supposed to exist. I was in the middle of a much bigger project, something I’ve been writing on and off for almost two years, when I saw an online challenge to write a short story a day right through February.
I’ve always been able to write fast (it’s pretty unusual for me to have a project take anything close to two years!) and so I decided to have a break from the “big project” to take up this challenge. Writing can be a pretty lonely task, even with writer friends in real life and on social media, so doing something that I knew other people were doing at the same time was pretty appealing.
The stories were supposed to be 500 words each. My first one came out at just over 2,400. The next one was longer, and for convenience, I set it in the same fictional town. The one after that was longer again and, of course, was linked to that same town. I knew I was hitting word counts that some authors dream of and I realised that, if I kept this up, I’d have a book in no time.
Welcome to Neverbury downloaded itself into my consciousness without me quite knowing how. Characters started to reoccur unbidden and a narrative that connected all the various stories together revealed itself. I’d love to claim that, somewhere, there’s a pin board covered in notes and photographs and bits of red string where I planned all this out. I didn’t. Neverbury is a book with a life of its own, and I’m just along for the ride.
“I knew I was hitting word counts that some authors dream of and I realised that, if I kept this up, I’d have a book in no time.”
What do you think makes you stand out as an author? Are you someone who throws themselves into the stories they write?
I’d like to think it’s the way that I blend genres and themes. Welcome to Neverbury has been described as being both scary and funny, which is what I was aiming for. Life is scary and funny at the same time.
Whatever I’m writing, I like to get to the heart of the story, the human core. Any decent story, in my opinion, should be about something universally human. So, I might be writing about demons in a charity shop on the surface, but really I’m writing about devotion and commitment and how sometimes we can get lost in these things. A story might look like it’s just about a sea monster, but really it’s about guilt and the way in which people can get trapped making the same mistakes over and over.
Where does Welcome To Neverbury rank in your biggest successes so far?
This is a tough question to answer! Having worked on lots of different projects with different publishers and distributors, it’s not always easy to measure the success of one project over another.
One way in which Welcome to Neverbury does stand out is that this is a book where I have done almost everything myself. Working in comics, you always have at least one artist you’re working with. Working on a TV pilot or a movie, the team is huge and the writer is just one cog in the whole machine. What you put on the page is not what comes out at the other end of the process. That’s not a bad thing – it can be quite magical in its own way, but it does mean sacrificing some control over the finished product.
I’ve been lucky with Welcome to Neverbury to have some great beta readers and one very supportive friend, Terry Cooper, who volunteered to be “The Voice of Neverbury” and record the audiobook version. (Terry is disgustingly talented and has found it far too easy, in my opinion, to voice over twenty different characters in a single book.)
Other than that, however, I’ve done everything from the writing to the typesetting to the cover design and all the marketing. Seeing Welcome to Neverbury turn up as Amazon’s number 1 “Hot New Release” in one of my categories a week or so ago was a giddy thrill and so, at least in this respect, this book is my biggest so far.
If you could go back in time to one book you read for the first time, what would it be and why?
This is going to sound soppy but it would be something like “Daddy is My Hero” by Dawn Richards, “Goodnight Spaceman” by Michelle Robinson, or anything by Oliver Jeffers on the specific condition that I was also reading it for the first time to my boys, William and Daniel.
Although “Welcome to Neverbury” is definitely for grown ups, most of my Doctor Who spin off books have been for kids and writing for children, especially thinking about my own boys, has been a joy over the past few years.
The kids are growing up now, and will probably notice that I’m not actually very cool at any moment.
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What do you think is the biggest obstacle facing independent and aspiring authors these days?
I would definitely say AI is the biggest challenge. We are already seeing marketplaces like Amazon being overwhelmed by a tsunami of AI generated content, which is making it harder for indie authors to stand out and setting us back in terms of people’s perceptions of the quality of independently published books.
I’m not a snob – I’d say that anyone can write a book. But, for goodness’ sake, write it yourself! Current AI systems work by taking a massive amount of content, and many people believe a lot of it was taken without permission, then using this content to just predict what words come, one after another, in response to any query. It’s a very big, very posh version of the predictive text function on your phone. AI researchers call this “The Stochastic Parrot“. Look it up.
The point is, when people tell you “You can use AI to write a book”, they are lying to you. What they are really saying is, “You can use AI to chop up, remix, spin wash, and regurgitate someone else’s work into a book”.
“I’m not a snob – I’d say that anyone can write a book. But, for goodness’ sake, write it yourself!”
I hope there is light at the end of the tunnel. Right now the FTC, in America, is asking companies like OpenAI (who make ChatGPT) to reveal what data they used to create their large language model and where they got it from. Getty Images are already suing Stability AI for using their images in their image generator without permission. And, of course, writers and actors’ unions are currently on strike and campaigning, amongst other things, for restrictions on the use of AI in creative industries.
This is not so much an obstacle as it is a legitimate threat to the entire business model that has underpinned the arts since the first cave person traded something for some nice pictures of bison on their cave wall. Personally, I wasn’t looking forward to a future where humans did menial, labour intensive jobs so that they could earn enough money to buy books and watch movies made by robots. It’s supposed to be the other way around!
If you’ve ever written anything online, there is a chance that your content has ended up in one of these models and is being chopped up and sold off in chunks without you receiving a single penny in compensation. It’s something every writer should be aware of.
If you could go back in time and give your younger self one tip, what would it be?
I’ve flitted around a lot in my writing career. I don’t think I regret any of it; working in so many formats and genres has helped me to craft my own voice. I’ve also had a lot of fun, which was really the point.
One thing that I think I would do is invest in myself a little more. Take more chances and be bolder with promoting myself. People who know me will think this is laughable but, honestly, nothing succeeds like excess when it comes to marketing!
I once heard someone say that it had taken them over a decade to be an overnight success. So… any day now…
And finally, what do you hope the future holds for you and your writing?
There is certainly more “Neverbury” in the pipeline! I’ve got plans for at least two more books in the series, plus the audiobook version and paperback are coming soon. Seeing as I didn’t plan to write this book in the first place, I really do owe it to that strange little town and its inhabitants to see what happens next!
After that, I suspect I shall return to the “big project” that I set aside to write Neverbury in the first place…
Check out Chris and all of his work at his website, or follow him on Twitter
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Part-time reader, part-time rambler, and full-time Horror enthusiast, James has been writing for What We Reading since 2022. His earliest reading memories involved Historical Fiction, Fantasy and Horror tales, which he has continued to take with him to this day. James’ favourite books include The Last (Hanna Jameson), The Troop (Nick Cutter) and Chasing The Boogeyman (Richard Chizmar).
