An Interview with Thom Cree
Thom Cree is a writer, poet, and screenwriter. His debut screenplay, Seagull, from the collection Briefs, earned him Quarter-Finalist victory in the Los Angeles International Screenplay Awards Winter 2024. His work has been published in literary journals worldwide and his science fiction novella, Eidetic, features in Temple Dark Books’ Channel the Dark Anthology. His previous work, The Man Who, is an epic collection of tales of morality, love, violence, and depravity set against beautifully evoked landscapes of nineteenth-century America’s West; tombs and sacred temples of Egypt and Nubia; and the internal machinations of British Intelligence.
Who/what made you want to write? Was there a particular person, or particular writers/works/art forms that influenced you?
Writers such as Evelyn Waugh, Charles Dickens, Dylan Thomas, Ernest Hemingway, and T.S. Eliot initially gave me the incentive to write. But out of our contemporary authors, Cormac McCarthy, John le Carré, William Faulkner, Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson, and Martin McDonagh are my influencers in the main. That said, a great deal of surrealist art, film, and music are a huge source of inspiration as well.
What inspired you to start writing this book?
My son. I had come across a story he had written, which I had kept from his early school days. It was funny, brilliant, and altogether bonkers. The joy it gave me then became something I wanted to offer to my readers.
Tell us the story of your book’s title. Was it easy to find, or did it take forever?
As the book is a collection of short stories, I thought it would be unconventional and fun yet ambiguous to have its title describe just that. Moreover, in the UK, briefs are also known as men’s underpants. The subtitle further amplifies the title as ‘A Word Salad of the Surreal, Absurd & Black-Comedy,’ giving its readers an idea of what lies in store.
If your book had a soundtrack, what are some songs that would be on it?
“The Rocky Road to Dublin” – The Chieftans
“Die Zauberflöte” – Arie: Ach, Ich Fühl’s – Mozart
Anything by Carter Burwell
What is one thing you hope readers take away from reading your book? How do you envision your perfect reader?
I hope my work evokes a myriad of emotion and intellectual stimulation.
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