Festivale Online Magazine Interview
C S Burrough: answers the Usual Questions
According to the author, 'I'm a Sydneysider who writes. I love cats, sunshine and beaches and read a lot. My name is Colin.' Colin's latest novel, Or Forever Be Damned, is being published in July 2014 (e-book) and September 2014 (paperback) by Silky Oak Press, and will be available on Amazon and other leading e-retailers.
Has your interaction with fans, for example, at conventions, affected your work?
I avoid conventions like the plague, would rather stick needles into my eyeballs. Love interacting with readers online though, I feed on it to aid writer's block.
Is there any particular incident (a letter, a meeting, a comment that stands out?
After someone recently reread my 1995 memoir, she commented that I should maybe combine my obsession with historical detail with my theatrical working experience to pen a novel. That was the inspiration for my theatrical historical, Or Forever Be Damned.
Do you have a favourite author or book (or writer or film or series) that has influenced you or that you return to?
Most of Jean Rhys' works, especially her earlier ones. From about age four her take on the world was as if seen through the bottom of an empty gin bottle.
Who is the person you would most like to be trapped in a lift with? or a spaceship?
Kath Day-Knight from Kath & Kim TV sitcom.
Who is the person you would most DISlike to be trapped in a lift with? Or a spaceship?
Kath Day-Knight's daughter, Kim Craig náe Day.
What would you pack for space? (Is there a food, beverage, book, teddy bear, etc that you couldn't do without?)
Nicotine lozenges, Nescafá Blend 43 and my Kindle Paperwhite 3G.
What is the most important thing you would like to get/achieve from your work?
To encourage the diminishing pastime of reading literature instead of social media pages.
What is the special satisfaction of your work?
Knowing someone has read my imagination, that I've communicated something in a way I can't achieve in real time dialogue.
Just the facts:
Born: UK, nineteen-fifty-something.
Resides: Sydney, Australia.
Bibliography/Awards:
Box and Cotton -- Australian Short Stories # 27 1989.
Just Up the Road -- Outrage anthology 1994.
Keeping the Family Name -- autiobiographical novel 1995.
Keeping Up Appearances -- column in Capital Q Weekly 1995 -- 1998.
Not Grunting, Squealing -- novella serialised in SX News 23 instalments 2001.
Parlour -- I Am a Camera anthology 2009.
Or Forever Be Damned -- historical novel 2014.
