Consumed began as a screenplay about two romantically entwined journalists, Naomi Seberg and Nathan Math, who become embroiled in the case of Aristide Arosteguy, a renowned French philosopher whose wife has been murdered and partially eaten – perhaps by her husband. But the screenplay refused to take shape and was set aside. Until, that is, Winstanley approached Cronenberg with the suggestion of writing a novel.

“I said, ‘Well, I have this screenplay that really is not working as a screenplay, and I have a feeling it’s perhaps because it’s really a novel. Why don’t I send this to you? Propose this to you?’ And she said yes right away.”

That was nearly 10 years ago. Consumed had to be written in spurts, in those fleeting and erratic months between the writing, planning, shooting, editing, and release of movies. “It took a lot of years, because I made five movies in the interim,” Cronenberg explains. “And it’s kind of frustrating because everybody likes to say, ‘How long did it take you to write?’ I even want to know that myself, and I can’t say because, really, it’s only seat time that counts. I can’t even say that I was thinking about it all the time because when I was making those movies they’re as demanding as anything else.”

He describes the process as “perilous,” saying, “You’d go back to it and think, ‘What if I hate this? What if it’s no good? What if it’s always been no good and now I can perceive clearly that it’s no good?’ Then the other part of the perilousness was that I’d say, ‘No, it’s actually quite good, but I don’t think I can continue with that goodness. I don’t think I have it any more.’ So it was a no-win situation, and I know from reading interviews with other writers it’s a common thing.”

Although Consumed began as a screenplay, when it morphed into a novel it became another animal entirely. “Totally different,” Cronenberg explains. “It surprised me. I’ve written a lot of screenplays – originals and adaptations – but I always knew that screenwriting was a strange, hybrid kind of writing. A lot of the most famous screenwriters are functionally illiterate, really, because the words don’t matter unless it’s dialogue.”

Writing a novel, by contrast, more closely resembles directing than screenwriting, Cronenberg suggests. “You’re casting it, you’re doing the makeup, you’re doing the costumes, the lighting, the locations, and, of course, the words do count and that’s the whole other thing.” In 2008, with Consumed already making its fitful way forward, Cronenberg experienced another instructive lesson in other media when he was asked to direct an opera version of his 1986 body-horror classic, The Fly, for the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. The libretto was written by David Henry Hwang, whose stage play, M. Butterfly, the filmmaker had made into a movie in 1993, and the composer was long-time collaborator Howard Shore. Cronenberg resolutely avoided transposing cinematic tropes onto another medium. As an opera, The Fly demanded a metamorphosis into its own entity; the same principle adhered to the emerging novel.

That said, Consumed is unmistakably of a piece with Cronenberg’s cinematic world. Told in a literary style that’s cool, formal, and verging on pathologically detached, it percolates with undercurrents of obsession, fear, existentialist despair, and displaced sexual desire. It is also as funny as it is philosophically curious, and fascinated with the evolving co-dependency of the organic and technological – a theme that pervades pretty much everything Cronenberg has committed to film.

Similarities notwithstanding, the first-time novelist was so determined not to write a movie-in-waiting that he insists Consumed need never be adapted for the screen – at least not by him. If the novel is to be judged – and it will be – let it be judged for what it is, and not what its author is more famous for doing. The distinction is not only critical for Cronenberg, it also helped liberate his creative process. When Consumed began to insist on its autonomous integrity as a book, it compelled its writer to respect that desire.

“So it was a shockingly different process, although pleasing, too, because I really wanted a literary experience,” Cronenberg says. “I wasn’t looking to write something that was a template for a movie. And I’ve compared this to what happened when I directed The Fly opera in Paris. People thought that I would use video screens and all kinds of filmic stuff. And I said, ‘No. I want an absolutely theatrical experience. I’m not interested in that other stuff. I’ve made that movie already.’”