Breathe Everyone Has To Do It

Catching Your BreathA word of warning. If you're at all familiar with my writing, the following novella is not what you'd expect from me. In fact, it's unlike anything I've written in a long time, and there's a specific reason for this. I think as writers mature, they gain the confidence to launch into new styles of narrative, but sometimes they also lose something. There is a directness and an innocence in early books that can be hard to recapture. The most disheartening thing a reader can tell you is that he or she loved your first novel.'Breathe' developed from three different directions; some research I did for short stories, the idea for a movie, and a desire to write simply and directly again. It was intended as an experiment in returning to roots, and what is known in the film industry as a 'teether', a tale to encourage neophytes. It is very difficult to write simply when you have become addicted to complex sentence structures and oblique ideas, so I deliberately limited myself - present tense only, no lengthy descriptions, no literary tricks, characters defined by their actions, no carefully buried subtexts. In the last few years I've tried every short-form genre I can think of, from noir to romance, satire, parody and farce, but I haven't turned my hand to pulp horror in years. The exercise a fast blast of fresh air for me. I made extensive notes, then sat down and wrote the first draft in one sitting. The intention, after all, was to not let you catch your breath. Oddly, I've since discovered that the idea is not as far-fetched as it may appear; A Japanese company has been offering a very similar service to the one proposed by the Symax Corporation. Without the zombies, of course.Christopher FowlerFowler, Christopher is the author of 'Breathe Everyone Has To Do It', published 2004 under ISBN 9781903889671 and ISBN 1903889677.