Philip Henry - Writer of Irish Horror

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Who the hell is Philip Henry?

Some 1,974 years after some bright spark invented the calendar, I was born. On the 23rd of March that year I started screaming for attention and haven’t stopped yet. I grew up outside the town of Ballymoney in Northern Ireland and lived there for the next twenty years or so. I now live about ten miles away in the town of Coleraine. Despite what you may have heard, Northern Ireland is a beautiful place to live... apart from the monsters.

I went to school and learned that most things aren’t worth learning. The exception was English. One of my earliest memories is when I was nine years old and the teacher excused me from Math class so I could finish a story I had started writing in English. Maybe she knew something that I would later discover; that I was destined to be a writer, or maybe she just had a hangover and couldn’t be bothered. In either case my writing career was encouraged. I wish I still had some of those stories. I often wonder what they’re like. I do remember most of them involved ghosts and haunted houses.

My writing output was greatly reduced in High School as raging hormones convinced me my energies were better directed at trying to solve the enigma of women. I had limited success and eventually found a way to balance both my passions.

I left school and studied Engineering (I don’t know why), Information Technology and Performing Arts. Performing Arts was great. I got the chance to act, direct, play my guitar loudly and generally have a good time. Thanks to my wisecracking attitude, I was asked to write a few comedy sketches for a show we were putting on. I still have some of these and as soon as the Hubble telescope discovers a Black Hole, I’m hiring a shuttle and throwing them in. Still, it gave me the bug to write again and during my time studying music at Barnsley College I wrote several short stories (they also have a date with the Black Hole), and a sitcom, which wasn’t bad.

Next I wrote a film, Five. I learned a lot from writing this but most important was not to put in jokes about current affairs because they go out of date VERY quickly. My second attempt at a screenplay was Arcane, which I think is very good and I’m still trying to sell.

Then, the unthinkable happened: capitalist society forced me to get a job. Anyone who has ever worked in a factory will know what mind-numbing tedium it is. Twelve-hour shifts give you a lot of time to think and I got an idea for a novel about two married vampires living in present-day Northern Ireland. When I wasn’t working, or sleeping, or cursing the patron saint of horrible jobs (St. Tony, I think) I worked on my novel. It took a long time. Then, Oh happy day, I lost my job. I had been working on my book for eighteen months and was about halfway through it. When I was on the dole I wrote the second half in just over a month.

After trying all the British horror publishers (all seven of them) without success, a friend suggested I try American publishers. A quick search on the net yielded the name Black Death Books. I sent them my manuscript and they liked it. The rest is history....

So, who the hell is Philip Henry? He’s a writer.

"It is a fearful thing to love what death can touch."