Auteur: The Final Word: James T. Mulholland Interview

Freelance writer and avid horror fan James T. Mulholland wrote  A Play for the End of the World  in the anthology The Final Word, the debut volume of Arcbeatle Press’s new Auteur series. And Riley G. Boyd has questions for him…

Above: James Timothy Mulholland in 2026.

Tell us about yourself, your creative background? 
My name’s James Timothy Mulholland and I’m a 29-year-old freelance writer. I’ve been writing down short stories and ideas since secondary school. My first pieces of published work were for the 2020 and 2021 editions of The Greenwich Anthology, which featured a selection of my short stories, a couple of poems and a play. My first story to be released commercially was titled Call Me Ishmael, a short science-fiction audiobook that was a part of the Faction Paradox: Dionus’s War series at BBV Productions. I followed it up with another audiobook titled The Healer’s Sin. I then wrote a novelisation of the 1999 Nigel Fairs audio play, The Choice.

What interests you about working with Auteur as a character? 
What makes Auteur interesting for me is his solipsistic mindset. As far as he’s concerned, we’re just props or narrative devices for him to use and abuse. This alone should make him horrifying, but then you remember that not only can he alter reality but he also has access to all of Time and Space. He’s what happens when you combine the manipulative aspects of Doctor Who’s Seventh Doctor with the demented showmanship of Mark Hamill’s Joker. 
Besides, as a writer, how can you not love this character? He’s a reality-altering sociopath who thinks he’s the greatest person who ever existed, and you can drop him into any setting, any genre. The amount of stories you can tell with him — either as protagonist or antagonist — is endless. 

Indeed, Volume 1: The Final Word alone contains a dozen very different stories — did the project’s collaborative nature add to its appeal for you?
I like knowing that my story is a part of an even bigger one. If a standalone book is like a world, an anthology is a universe.

How does your story relate to the themes of art and fiction that are naturally associated with the character? Are there any other themes you regard as important to your story or to the anthology as a whole? 
Because Auteur has the ability to change reality however he sees fit, I thought it would be interesting to examine how the cast and crew behind a stage show have a similar ability. Plays are living art, their characters aren’t confined to the pages of a book or a film frame. In pantomime, the Ugly Stepsisters can crack a joke about the latest episode of EastEnders in their introductory scene during one performance, but for the following night’s showing, the actors might joke about the latest political scandal instead. Plays are worlds that actors temporarily inhabit, yet during their stay, they can change that world how they see fit. I think that this logic complements another theme that I wanted to explore in my story, that of transformation — but that would be going into spoilers…
I also thought it would be interesting to examine how ordinary people would react to the existence of fantastical beings like Auteur — in other words, how realistic, three-dimensional personalities might deal with the typical revelation that the universe they inhabit is nothing more than a playground for higher beings, and worlds like Earth may get trampled by such powers. I didn’t just want to wallow in the horror that such a revelation would invoke; I also wanted to show how ordinary people could survive and even triumph against the machinations of gods and monsters.

What were your biggest inspirations for this story? 
A Play for the End of the World came about because of a dream I once had where a troupe of vampires performed this play once a century and they possessed the only script in existence — I have a sneaking suspicion that the Théâtre des Vampires from Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles were probably in the back of my mind. I wrote the idea down and sat on it for a while, uncertain if I could expand it into a story. When I was invited to contribute a story for the Auteur anthology, I decided to revisit this idea, believing that it could make for a fun adventure. I dropped the vampire troupe in favour of a human one and tied it into the lore surrounding the Yssgaroth from Neil Penswick’s New Adventures novel, The Pit. Clive Barker’s Human Remains and Kim Newman’s Drechenfels also provided reference points for the story — Human Remains involves metamorphosis and Drachenfels revolves around a play that is secretly used by one of its performers as a ritual.

What can you tell us about the writing process? 
The biggest challenge I faced — setting aside the hurdle I faced was when I caught a rather nasty winter bug and had to put my story aside whilst I recovered — was working out how my story should end. Before writing my story in full, I drafted an outline. In my first outline, my story ended with Neville and his fellow actors going off to have further adventures in Space and Time, hoping that I could revisit them in another story. I expunged this idea once I realised how awful and ridiculous it was. In my second outline, I had the characters work with Auteur in creating a psychic illusion that would trick the Yssgaroth into thinking that it had consumed our world, but scrapped that ending since it didn’t make much sense and felt like a cop out. 
I’d sent my outlines to Aristide, who provided me with honest and helpful feedback; he pointed out a few flaws such as Auteur’s motive not being fleshed out properly as well as the mechanics of the play’s ritual. I read through Aristide’s feedback carefully, taking on board his suggestions and began work on my story. 
I had made good progress with my story, but for a while I struggled to come up with an ending that I was satisfied with — until I decided to take a step back, think about the themes I wanted to explore, and work out an ending that would complement those themes. Once I had overcome this obstacle, the rest of my writing process was fairly stress-free.

What do you hope people take away from your story and Auteur as a whole? 
I hope that their takeaway would be that like Auteur, we can and often do alter our own personal reality. True, most of us don’t own magical journals that can allow us to rewrite history as we see fit — I know if I did, there’d be more seasons of Classic Doctor Who! — but you can alter your present as well as your future.

What’s your next creative project and where can our readers find you next? 
At the moment, I’m writing a fantasy novel in a similar vein to Sir Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books and John Morey’s Card Snake. So far, I’ve filled up two 200-page notebooks and I’m halfway through a third. I have a feeling draft one will be a door-stopper! I would also love to write more Auteur stories, he’s a fantastic character. I’ve even written down an outline for a future Auteur adventure…

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Auteur: The Final Word is available now:

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