As Susan points out, 3:AM fiction editor Chris Killen features (under the title “Shelf Stacker”) in the October edition of Dazed & Confused:
“Chris Killen began writing short stories at the age of 18. Now a widely-read 26, his themes range from an email to a cat, to a man preoccupied with drawing moustaches on things, to women. A lot of women. ‘I have not had a huge string of bizarre relationships, honest. A lot of what I’ve written is made up, or at the least exaggerated,’ he says. Many of Killen’s stories can be found online, and he’s linked several to his chapter-a-day blog, Untitled ‘Supermarket Nightmare’. Written from the perspective of a jaded supermarket employee, it offers conversations with his dominatrix boss The Turtle, an ‘office’ romance, and other comical, disturbing and rather sweet anecdotes. There is the opportunity for reader participation, too. ‘I ran a competition a while ago for someone to write chapter 50 for me. That went well. People entered. Someone ‘won’. I like the idea of people feeling ‘part of it’.’ Killen did once work in Sainsbury’s for a year, but now earns a living working in a Manchester bookshop, having only acquired £125 for his writing so far. However, look out for his currently unpublished short novel The Bird Room: this strangely merry look at the agony of true love and unfaithfulness should soon allow Killen to quit stacking.”
Over at The Bookseller, Francis Bickmore of Canongate compares Killen to Kurt Vonnegut and Richard Brautigan. He adds that he “had never read anything like Killen’s manuscript”: “I got straight on the phone to Chris and arranged to meet. I was amazed to find that the writer of such sophisticated prose was both unagented and so young”.
First posted: Tuesday, September 18th, 2007.
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Fantastic! The stuff that dreams are made of.
/ Posted by Mikael Covey on September 23rd, 2007 at 3:15 am / Permalink /This is heartening; Chris is a cracking writer with talent. Should be a very interesting career ahead indeed.
Good on Chris Killen.
Lee Rourke.
/ Posted by Lee Rourke on September 24th, 2007 at 10:48 pm / Permalink /